DlULUUT 

LIBRARY 


SYLYAtf  SECEETS, 


IN 


BIRD-SONGS  AND  BOOKS. 


BY 

MAUKICE  THOMPSON. 

AUTHOR  OF 

"BY-WAYS  AND  BIRD-NOTES,"  "SONGS  OF  FAIK 

WEATHER,"  "THE  WITCHERY  OF 

ARCHERY,"  ETC. 


NEW  YORK : 
JOHN  B.  ALDEN,  PUBLISHER. 

1887. 


Copyright,  1887, 
BY 

THE  PROVIDENT  BOOK  CO. 
BIOLOGY 
LIBRARY 


Lib'. 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS. 


Preface,  5 

Mind,  Memory,  and  Migration  of  Birds,  -        11 

Beside  the  Gulf  with  Ruskin,  26 

Ceryle  Alcyon,    -  36 

Swamp  Sketches,      -  40 

In  the  Matter  of  Shakespeare,  -      58 

The  Motif  of  Bird-Song,       -  70 

The  Genesis  of  Bird-Song,        -  -      85 

The  Anatomy  of  Bird-Song,  -          101 
Some  Hyoid  Hints,        -           ...    125 


M520333 


PREFACE. 


THIS  little  book  is  made  up  after  the  fashion 
of  Nature's  concretions.  The  parts  seemed  to 
have  a  sort  of  affinity  for  one  another,  with- 
out, in  some  instances,  any  discoverable  kin- 
ship. A  sheaf  of  essays  (most  of  them  written 
in  the  woods  of  the  South)  I  offer  to  the  reader 
just  as  it  was  bundled  together  after  appear- 
ing at  intervals  and  in  separate  wisps  in  the 
Atlantic,  Scribner's,  the  Library,  and  other 
magazines. 

From  my  earliest  boyhood  to  the  present 
hour,  I  have  felt  a  constant  and  increasing 
pleasure  in  chasing  sylvan  secrets  through 
sunlight  and  shadow,  by  river  and  brook,  on 
mountain  and  in  valley,  all  the  way  back  and 
forth  from  the  lakes  of  the  North  to  the  great 
Southern  gulf.  Many  of  these  secrets  I  have 
caught,  as  in  a  net,  a  lot  of  rustling,  chirrup- 
ing, melodious  things,  like  singing  birds,  or 
prismatic,  glowing,  odorous,  flower-like  vis- 
ions robbing  me  of  the  power  of  expression, 
and  yet  ever  demanding  description.  I  have 
felt  no  other  limitation  quite  so  galling  as  the 
inadequacy  of  my  insight.  I  can  see  almost 
to  the  nucleus  of  things— I  can  nearly  mako 
out  this  or  that  perfect  form— I  almost  know 
what  the  serpent  thinks,  what  the  dove  de- 
sires, what  the  mocking-bird  sings  ;  but  the 
dainty  film  is  always  interposed,  just  at  the 
moment  of  triumph,  to  shut  out  the  perfect 
conclusion  and  to  leave  a  haunting  half- 
5 


6  PREFACE. 

knowledge  in  its  place.  It  has  cheered  and 
comforted  me  not  a  little  to  find  such  men  as 
Huxley  and  Darwin  and  Alfred  Wallace  turn- 
ing disconsolately  away  from  the  same  little 
difficult  nebulae  that  have  worried  my  weaker 
eyes. 

Possibly  I  am  the  only  person  in  the  world 
who  ever  fancied  that  the  highest  form  of 
poetry  may  lurk  in  the  problems  of  compara- 
tive anatomy  and  physiology.  Be  this  as  it 
may,  behind  the  hints  and  correlations  and 
suggestions  of  dry  bones  and  dessicated  fossils 
there  appears  to  me  an  epic  of  awful  glory 
and  power  and  significance.  What  a  romance 
is  geology!  What  a  melodrama  is  life  from 
:•  ts  lowest  to  its  highest  forms !  We  are  apt 
to  look  upon  Darwin  as  a  realist ;  but  when 
we  read  him  well  he  is  a  poet  like  Milton,  a 
dreamer  like  Pythagoras,  a  prophet  like 
Daniel,  a  dramatist  like  Shakespeare. 

The  more  I  have  studied  Nature,  the  more  I 
have  become  aware  of  God.  When  I  approach 
the  beginning  I  find  Him,  and  His  hand  puts 
me  gently  but  firmly  away,  as  if  to  say :  "I 
stand  here  all  alone."  When  I  approach  the 
end,  there  too  is  God  standing  all  alone,  self- 
existent,  sufficient,  unimaginable,  at  once  the 
cause  and  the  culmination,  the  germ,  the 
bloom,  and  the  fruit  of  all  things.  I  do  not 
expect  that  men  ever  will  find  the  secret  of 
life  locked  in  a  cell  or  in  any  other  minute 
division  of  matter.  No  analysis  of  the  spe- 
cialist, no  synthesis  of  the  generalizcr  can  ever 
pass  beyond  the  vail.  God  said:  ''Let  life 
be,"  and  life  was.  Still  I  believe  in  evolution ; 
I  feel  it,  I  see  it ;  but  it  is  evolution  by  God's 
law,  bounded  by  His  limiting  purpose.  When 
we  study  Nature  we  study  Him,  not  in  the 
materialistic  or  pantheistic  sense,  but  in  the 


PREFACE.  7 

Christian  sense.  The  will  of  the  universe  is 
God's  will,  because  God  made  the  universe,  as 
he  made  man,  and  blew  into  it  the  energy 
that  fills  it.  I  see  no  clash  between  Christian- 
ity and  Science.  Geology  tells  me  the  same 
story  that  Moses  and  the  prophets  tell  me; 
the  birds  sing  it,  the  flowers  hint  it,  the  winds 
murmur  it,  the  aspirations  of  my  soul  are 
founded  in  it. 

The  following  essays,  however,  are  not  es- 
pecially devoted  to  evolution.  Indeed  some 
of  them  are  not  Nature-studies  at  all.  The 
one  on  Shakespeare  when  it  first  appeared 
called  down  upon  me  the  tremendous  hand  of 
a  great  scholar,  and  I  was  cuffed  until  my 
ears  rang  merrily ;  but  I  did  not  wince,  and  I 
would  walk  five  miles  to-day  to  clasp  that 
hand.  If  some  over-earnest  follower  of  Hux- 
ley, Parker,  and  Macgillivray  shall  consider  it 
worth  while  to  show  clearly  that  my  conclu- 
sions in  "  Hyoid  Hints"  and  the  "Anatomy 
of  Bird-song  "  are  erroneous,  let  him  proceed; 
but  until  he  do  this,  I  shall  believe  in  my  de- 
monstrations with  perfect  complacency. 

After  all,  the  title,  "  Sylvan  Secrets," under 
which  this  booklet  goes  forth,  does  not  neces- 
sarily signify  that  the  Secrets  are  explained ; 
they  may  be  merely  catalogued  as  precious 
mysteries,  valuable  for  the  very  qualities 
which  render  them  insoluble.  Perhaps  there 
may  be  critics  who  will  imagine  that  the  most 
obvious  secret  of  all  is  the  motif  of  my  work, 
and  I  am  quite  charitable  enough  to  sympa- 
thize with  the  practical  spirit  of  such,  al- 
athough  I  certainly  must  have  had  a  purpose 
other  than  the  mere  pleasure  of  writing.  I 
saw,  felt,  heard,  tasted,  dreamed,  and  fancied, 
and  the  substance  of  all  was  what  I  tried  to 
put  into  words.  What  is  stated  as  fact  must 


8  PREFACE. 

be  taken  as  fact,  what  is  offered  as  conjecture 
or  inference  must  be  weighed  as  such,  and 
what  appears  to  be  the  overflow  of  a  cheerful 
and  optimistic  fancy  may  be  done  by  as  the 
reader  please. 

As  for  me,  when  I  turn  these  leaves  I  hear 
the  rustle  of  wild  foliage  and  wilder  wings, 
the  songs  of  many  birds,  the  bubbling  of  in- 
numerable brooks,  the  wash  of  surf,  and  the 
tumbling  of  white-caps.  Can  the  reader  hear 
these  by  the  same  means?  If  he  can,  my 
writing  has  not  been  done  without  a  touch  of 
genius. 

Who  reads  Nature  without  the  side-light  of 
many  books  ?  How  shall  one  keep  the  art 
of  literature  out  of  one's  interviews  with 
things  in  the  wilderness  ?  If  I  hear  a  thrush 
or  a  mocking-bird  sing,  how  shall  I  hinder 
the  coming  of  the  Persian  and  Provengal 
and  old  English  poets  with  their  rhymes 
about  the  Nightingale  ?  Before  I  know  it 
I  am  assuming  the  attitude  of  a  singer,  and 
am  posing  in  Nature's  face.  How  shall  I  be 
dumb  while  the  very  stars  are  eloquent  ? 
Here  is  Theocritus  and  here  is  Keats  singing 
away,  as  young  and  happy  as  ever;  why 
shall  I  not  attitudinize  in  my  day  and  way  ? 

"But  these  essays  are  incongruous,"  sug- 
gests the  critic.  Well,  then,  they  are  incongru- 
ous ;  but  what  of  it  ?  Nature  is  incongruous, 
nay  more,  it  is  contradictory,  as  are  certain 
of  my  essays.  At  one  time  my  observations  of 
facts  clearly  prove  one  thing  ;  at  another 
time  they  certainly  establish  just  the  oppo- 
site thing.  I  am  not  sure  that  this  is  alto- 
gether  my  fault,  for  Nature  is  tricksy  in  her 
moods  and  as  whimsical,  now  and  again,  as 
any  pedagogue.  She  strings  her  creations 
together  without  rhyme  or  reason.  The 


PREPACK  9 

violet  and  the  stramonium,  the  ground-cherry 
and  the  night-shade,  the  clover  and  the  net- 
tle, the  woodbine  and  the  poison  ivy  are  all 
bound  in  a  volume.  Man  has  done  all  the 
classifying,  all  the  distinctive  grouping.  It 
is  the  botanist,  not  Nature,  who  does  the  as- 
sorting, separating  and  naming.  The  rain 
and  the  sunshine  find  the  weed  as  well  as 
the  corn,  and  touch  it  as  lovingly. 

One  of  the  most  distinguished  of  American 
scientists  chanced  to  read  the  paper  on  the 
"  Anatomy  of  Bird-song  "  while  it  was  in  the 
manuscript.  "Nobody  will  care  for  this,1' 
he  said.  u  You  will  not  have  twenty  readers. 
Why,  when  I  was  attending  Huxley's  lect- 
ures in  London,  he  spoke  to  more  empty 
benches  than  to  auditors.  The  truth  is,  dry 
bones  are  very  poor  picking  at  best." 

This  was  not  news  to  me;  but  I  resented 
it  all  the  same,  for  I  see  in  geology,  in  compar- 
ative anatomy,  in  paleontology,  in  geograph- 
ical botany,  and  in  comprehensive  analysis 
of  Nature  generally,  the  basis  of  all  human 
inspiration,  for  these  include  the  universe 
and  man.  Divine  inspiration  comes  of  God, 
and  is  independent.  We  must  take  it  without 
a  question.  Our  study  of  man  is  feeble  and 
narrow,  if  we  make  it  all  foreground,  leav- 
ing out  the  perspective  of  natural  history. 
What  is  the  human  story  comprised  between 
the  oldest  monuments  and  the  books  of  to- 
day, if  we  compare  it  with  the  story  sug- 
gested by  the  hints  of  geology  ?  What  is  the 
romance  of  the  Cid,  or  the  Romance  of  the 
Rose,  or  the  Iliad,  beside  the  romance  of  the 
peat  bogs,  or  of  the  coal-measures,  or  even 
of  the  American  mounds  ?  There  was  a 
Golden  Age  of  song,  there  was  the  idyllic  life 
of  Arcadia  ;  but  beyond  these  there  was  a 


10  PREFACE. 

time  when  tropic  flowers  and  spicy  plants 
and  grasses  and  odorous  fruits  grew  around 
the  boreal  pale.  To  me  all  nature  is  ro- 
mance ;  even  the  skull  of  a  bird  is  the  flower 
of  a  long  chanson  de  geste  coming  up  through 
a  million  years  of  adventure  and  change 
from  the  fish  or  the  saurian.  Every  species 
of  plant  or  animal  has  an  heroic  significance 
when  I  remember  what  a  battle  it  has  fought 
for  existence.  When  I  am  out  with  the  trees 
and  the  winds  and  the  birds  and  the  flowers, 
I  am  consorting  with  things  of  ancient  ex- 
traction whose  adventures  and  experiences 
reach  back  into  the  farthest  mists  of  perspec- 
tive. They  have  secrets  to  tell  me,  but  how 
shall  I  know  when  they  are  told  ? 

THE  AUTHOR. 


SYLVAN  SECRETS. 


MIND,    MEMORY   AND   MIGRATION   OF 
BIRDS. 

WITHOUT  preliminary  negotiations,  or  spe- 
cial preparations  of  any  kind,  I  took  posses- 
sion of  an  old  building  which  once  had  been  a 
"gin-house."  Now  bear  in  mind  that  I  do 
not  mean  gin-mill  when  I  write  gin-house^ 
for  the  words  are  far  from  synonymous.  My 
new  abode  was  picturesquely  dilapidated  and 
stood  in  the  midst  of  a  dense  growth  of  young 
pine  trees.  From  a  window  I  had  a  vie\v, 
through  a  rift  in  the  foliage,  of  a  small  blue 
lake  and  a  wide  stretch  of  green,  rush-cov- 
ered marsh.  An  ancient  peach  and  pear 
orchard  was  close  at  hand,  the  venerable  old 
neglected  trees  standing  knee-deep  in  a  mass 
of  scrubby  scions. 

This  gin-house,  instead  of  having  once  been 
a  place  where  intoxicating  drinks  were  con- 
cocted and  sold,  was  simply  the  wreck  of  an 
old  plantation  cotton-gimiing  establishment; 
indeed  here  was  an  abandoned  and  over- 
grown estate  which  formerly  had  been  the 
pride  of  a  Southern  planter  of  great  wealth 
and  social  and  political  power.  The  stately 
mansion  had  disappeared,  saving  the  frag- 
ments and  ruins  of  some  stuccoed  brick  col- 
umns and  the  amorphous  heaps  of  rubbish 
suggestive  of  chimneys  and  foundation  pil- 
11 


12  SYLVAN  SECRETS. 

lars ;  nor  was  there  much  left  to  remind  one 
of  the  agricultural  wealth,  formerly  the 
largest  of  this  broad  area  now  given  over  to 
a  thrifty  growth  of  strong  young  trees  and  to 
a  wild,  musical  mob  of  birds.  A  considerable 
marsh,  once  drained  by  a  rude  wind-mill  and 
cultivated  in  sea-island  cotton,  had  been  re- 
claimed by  the  tide- water  (which  now  crept 
in  rhythmically  through  many  breaks  in  the 
little  dyke)  and  had  become  a  home  of  the 
herons  and  bitterns.  Remnants,  more  pa- 
thetic than  picturesque,  of  the  tall  shaft  and 
pumping  apparatus  belonging  to  the  mill  lay 
in  a  mouldering  and  rusting  heap  beside  the 
water. 

My  gin-house  was  a  poor  shelter  if  it  should 
rain,  but  I  could  supplement  it  with  my 
waterproof  blanket;  and  then  the  climate 
was  very  kind  at  worst.  How,  indeed,  could 
a  climate  be  more  tender  in  its  concessions  to 
one's  preferences  ?  A  breeze  from  the  gulf, 
salty  and  exhilarating,  or  a  waft  from  the 
pine-woods,  fragrantly  heavy  with  terebinth 
and  balm,  was  blowing  day  and  night,  and 
the  medley  of  bird  songs  was  accompanied 
with  the  effective  counterpoint  of  the  distant 
sea-moan..  There  was  romance  in  the  atmos- 
pheric perspective  on  both  water  and  land  as 
well  as  in  the  story  suggested  by  the  ruins  all 
around  me,  and  a  few  of  my  readers  will 
readily  recall  from  experience  of  their  own 
how  sweet  an  auxiliary  to  realistic  study  is 
this  influence  of  romance.  Science,  through 
which  realism  works  its  only  wonders  (for 
realism  in  fiction  is  a  fraudulent  pretence), 
science,  I  say,  is  itself  most  charming  when 
its  light  flickers  on  the  filmy  and  misty  verge 
of  Nature's  romance,  and  your  genuine,  lover 
of  science  is  far  from  averse  to  making  his 
dryest  studies  under  circumstances  of  the 


MIND  AND  MEMORY  OF  BIRDS.         13 

most  picturesque  sort.  I  do  not  claim  that  I 
chose  my  old  cotton-gin  house  on.  account  of 
its  poetical  suggestiveness ;  this  quality  was 
simply  a  great  charm  added  to  a  spot  pos- 
sessed of  many  practical  advantages  in  aid  of 
my  purpose,  which  was  a  peculiar  line  of 
bird-study. 

On  one  side  a  fresh -water  lakelet,  on  the 
other  side  the  Gulf  of  Mexico— great  marsh 
meadows  and  reaches  of  sand-bar—dense  for- 
ests, thickets,  old  fields  given  over  to  Nature, 
orchards  left  to  the  will  of  the  mocking-birds 
and  their  friends  and  foes— everything,  in- 
deed, to  favor  my  quest  was  in  view,  with 
the  romance  and  the  beauty  thrown  in  for 
good  measure.  So,  swinging  my  hammock 
from  the  heavy  beams  of  the  gin-house  loft, 
and  leaving  the  care  of  the  mule  and  the 
spring-wagon  to  my  hired  free  man  of  color, 
who  was  to  be  my  factotum,  I  abandoned 
myself  to  the  study  in  hand,  feeling  that  for 
once  many  elements  had  joined  themselves 
together  to  enhance  my  physical  and  spirit- 
ual comfort.  Here  on  the  latest  fringe  of 
Nature's  geological  formation,  with  all  the 
newest  discoveries  of  natural  science  at  hand 
in  the  shape  of  books  and  memoranda,  and 
with  fishes,  birds,  reptiles  and  mammals, 
water  of  sea,  stream  and  lake,  woods, 
marshes  and  swamps,  with  all  the  range  of 
plants  growing  in  them,  what  more  could  I 
wish  ? 

It  was  comforting  to  realize  what  a  differ- 
ence there  must  be  between  life  now  and  life 
some  million  or  more  years  ago ;  for  there  has 
been  a  period  in  the  past  when  I  should  have 
had  to  be  content  with  sitting  upon  some 
bleak,  sandy  cretaceous  shore  and  studying 


14  SYLVAN  SECRTES. 

those  mockeries  of  birds  with  which  Nature 
was  fond  of  experimenting  in  her  infancy. 

Professor  Marsh  has  carefully  studied,  de- 
scribed and  figured  the  remains  of  an  ancient 
bird  which  he  has  named  Hesperornis  re- 
galis;  and  which  in  shape  and  habits  re- 
sembled a  loon.  He  makes  a  striking  com- 
parison between  the  brain  cavity  of  the 
ancient  and  that  of  the  modern  bird,  and 
draws  the  inference  that,  as  in  the  case  of 
mammals  and  reptiles  there  has  been  a  steady 
increase  of  intelligence  in  the  avian  animal 
from  the  most  remote  period  of  its  existence 
down  to  the  present  time.  Here  is  a  sugges- 
tion arising  from  the  fact  of  this  constant 
brain-development:  may  not  brain-improve- 
ment, which  is  another  phrase  for  intelligence- 
development,  account  in  a  large  degree  for 
the  gradual  self -modifying  of  species  to  suit 
the  environment  ?  Darwin's  law  of  the  sur- 
vival of  the  fittest  pre-supposes  simply  the 
fittest  physically ;  but  the  film  of  vague  intel- 
ligence primarily  planted  in  the  animal  no 
doubt  gave  the  impulse  toward  the  proper 
habitat  and  also  that  initial  elasticity,  which 
has  became  so  powerful,  rendering  self -modi- 
fication to  suit  changes  in  surroundings  not 
only  possible  but  comparatively  easy. 

Probably,  when  ail  manner  of  life  was 
largely  elementary  and  weak,  the  conditions 
of  change  were  almost  infinitely  mild  and  all 
the  movements  of  Nature  slow  and  gentle. 
In  those  times  little  intelligence  was  needed 
to  enable  the  fittest  to  survive.  It  may  be 
assumed  that  brain  and  nerve-centres  in- 
creased in  size  and  strength  as  necessity  com- 
pelled an  increase  of  nervous  exercise;  but 
such  an  assumption  compasses  a  great  deal 
not  directly  expressed  by  the  phrasing  of  it, 


MIND  AND  MEMORY  OF  BIEDS.         15 

for  the  influence  of  the  mind  upon  the  body, 
even  in  the  case  of  a  low  animal,  is  great  and 
manifold.  Indeed,  I  believe  that  the  whole 
matter  of  physical  modification  in  animals 
brought  about  by  the  exigencies  of  change  in 
environment,  is  referable,  in  an  obscure  and 
indirect  way,  to  that  influence.  What  we 
attempt  to  express  by  the  word  desire  is 
nothing  more  than  a  natural  (though  it  may 
be  a  sadly  debased)  impulse  toward  another 
state.  In  its  broadest  and  freest  sense  desire 
is  merely  the  initial  effort  of  a  being  toward 
a  new  experience  or  a  lost  estate;  in  other 
words,  it  is  the  consciousness  of  a  need 
coupled  with  an  impulse  in  the  direction  ob- 
taining it.  The  mind-cure  fraud  is  based 
upon  the  efficacy  of  desire.  The  concentra- 
tion of  the  mind  upon  any  particular  part  of 
the  body  certainly  affects  the  part,  and  the 
effect  may  be  to  produce  local  disturbance  of 
a  peculiar  kind,  or  to  destroy  a  result  of  local 
lesion,  provided  the  lesion  be  not  more  than 
a  disturbance  of  nervous  equilibrium.  From 
the  point  of  view  thus  taken  one  may  see 
one's  way  clear  to  an  inference  as  simple  as  it 
is  strong :  evolution  is  the  outcome  of  natu- 
ral desire,  and  natural  desire  has  been  gener- 
ated by  a  disturbance  of  natural  equilibrium. 
There  is  nothing  abstruse  or  occult  in  this 
proposition ;  it  is  merely  a  recognition  of  the 
development  of  [intelligence  and  of  the  con- 
trolling power  of  the  brain  in  animals. 

Professor  Marsh,  in  the  course  of  his  ad- 
mirable monograph  on  the  Odontornithes, 
or  ancient  toothed  birds,  suggests  that  cer- 
tain wingless  species  had  become  so  by  non- 
ttoer  of  the  organs  of  flight.  Perhaps  the 
limit  of  this  proposition  would  be  found  coin- 
hiding  with  that  of  brain-influence  above 


16  SYLVAN  SECRETS. 

enunciated.  The  neglect  of  an  organ  implies 
that  the  organ  is  not  needed,  and  that  there- 
fore it  is  not  desired.  On  the  other  hand,  if 
the  need  for  an  organ  increase,  the  desire  for 
it  will  strengthen  apace,  and  the  organ  will 
be  modified  in  accordance  with  this  natural 
desire.  The  trouble  about  fully  comprehend- 
ing this  law  lies  in  our  proneness  to  confining 
our  idea  of  its  operation  within  the  space  of 
a  few  years,  as  compared  with  the  almost 
immeasurable  ages  of  geologic  time  through- 
out which  the  law  has  operated  with  the 
effects  we  now  observe.  If  we  can  force  our 
minds  to  consider  a  million  years,  for  in- 
stance, as  the  minimum  space  of  time  requi- 
site to  effect  the  elimination  of  a  useless  organ 
by  the  operation  of  natural  desire,  transmit- 
ted by  heredity,  we  shall  begin  to  feel  the 
perfect  reasonableness  of  our  proposition. 

Going  a  step  farther,  I  think  there  is  much 
evidence  tending  to  prove  that  birds  are  en- 
dowed with  what  may  be  called  hereditary 
memory  and  hereditary  desire.  It  seems  that 
if  ever  man  possessed  this  hereditament  he 
has  lost  it  in  the  over-development  of  his 
higher  mental  powers. 

I  have  noted  the  following  facts : 

A  bird,  when  reared  in  captivity  and  far 
from  any  of  its  kind,  will  utter  exactly  the 
notes  of  its  ancestors.  It  will  also  build  a  nest 
after  the  fashion  prescribed  by  ancestral  hab- 
it. It  will  feed  its  young  in  accordance  with 
hereditary  custom.  It  will  migrate,  or  not, 
as  ancestral  influence  directs.  It  will  capture 
its  food  after  the  style  and  by  the  same  means 
established  in  its  tribe  by  immemorial  usage. 
It  will  seek  the  habitat  always  haunted  by  its 
kind. 

I  knew  a  boy  who  took  a  pair  of  unfledged 


MIND  AND  MEMOEY  OF  BIRDS.       17 

woodpeckers  from  the  parental  nest  and 
reared  them  by  hand.  He  kept  them  in  a 
cage  nearly  a  year,  and  then  freed  them. 
They  lingered  about  the  premises  and  soon 
pecked  a  hole  in  a  dead  pear  tree,  after  the 
true  picus  pattern,  and  therein  reared  a 
brood.  Nest-architecture  evidently  was  her- 
editary with  them. 

I  have  heard  a  mocking-bird,  reared  in 
captivity  and  alone  in  a  Northern  state,  utter, 
with  absolute  precision,  the  characteristic  cry 
of  a  Southern  bird  whose  voice  it  never  had 
heard  in  its  life. 

It  will  be  evident  to  every  close  observer 
that  the  habit  of  living  in  a  cage  is  becoming 
hereditary  with  the  canary  bird. 

Domestic  fowls  are  losing,  by  an  infinitesi- 
mal process,  their  wing-power.  The  need  for 
flight  is  diminishing  and  with  it  the  natural 
desire  for  wings.  The  body  and  legs  and 
brain  of  these  birds  are  rapidly  increasing  in 
weight  and  strength.  On  the  other  hand,  our 
domestic  fowls  have  largely  lost  their  ances- 
tral traits— hereditary  memory  with  them  is 
beginning  to  go  no  farther  back  than  to  the 
limit  of  this  domestic  state  of  existence. 

I  witnessed  a  striking  incident  in  bird  life 
which  was  very  suggestive :  a  wild  goose,  by 
some  accident  separated  from  its  flock  on  the 
spring  flight  northward,  circled  low  in  the 
air  uttering  now  and  again  its  loud  cry.  A 
domestic  gander  preening  himself  beside  a 
meadow  brook,  heard  the  clanging  voice  and 
lifting  his  head  answered  it  with  emphasis. 
I  could  not  help  wondering  if  an  almost  irre- 
sistible wave  of  memory  had  indeed  been 
started  in  the  brain  of  the  domestic  bird  by 
this  low-flying  migrant.  Dimly,  perhaps,  but 
wildly,  sweetly,  came  in  the  old  hereditary 


18  SYLVAN  SECRETS. 

desire  for  the  far  northern  water-brinks, 
along  with  an  elusive  and  tantalizing  recol- 
lection of  a  time,  thousands  of  years  ago, 
when  he,  in  the  body  of  a  remote  forebear,  or 
glamorous  male  ancestor,  voyaged  the  high 
thin  air  in  one  of  those  triangular  flocks 
sketched  on  the  violet  sky  of  spring,  or  on 
the  gray-blue  heaven  of  autumn. 

I  have  seen  a  flock  of  domestic  geese,  in 
early  spring  or  late  autumn,  rise  suddenly 
and  fly  around  in  the  air,  uttering  wild 
cries  and  exhibiting  every  sign  of  ecstatic  im- 
pulse, for  wliich  there  appeared  no  sufficient 
cause  in  their  surroundings  or  condition.  I 
have  not  a  doubt  that  this  is  an  almost  in- 
voluntary movement  toward  migration  gen- 
erated by  a  feeble  return  of  the  old  hereditary 
natural  desire. 

The  foregoing  facts  and  instances,  to  which 
might  be  added  many  more  of  a  like  charac- 
ter, all  tend  to  prove  that  birds  possess  some- 
thing like  hereditary  memory.  On  the  other 
hand  a  few  facts  may  be  cited  tending  to  es- 
tablish the  proposition  that  wild  birds  are 
modifying  themselves  in  response  to  the  exi- 
gencies arising  out  of  recent  changes  in  their 
surroundings. 

The  red-headed  woodpecker  is  rapidly  be- 
coming an  expert  fly -catcher,  a  pursuit  for 
which  his  physique  does  not  especially  fit 
him,  and  he  is  already  a  grain  and  fruit-eat- 
ing bird,  although  his  bill  and  tongue  are 
made  for  extracting  insects  from  rotten  wood. 

Chimney  swallows  have  almost  quite  aban- 
doned hollow  trees  for  their  nesting-places, 
even  in  our  most  thickly  wooded  areas,  pre- 
ferring our  chimneys. 

The  high-hole,  or  flicker,  has  become  almost 
entirely  a  ground  bird  in  its  feeding  habit, 


MIND  AND  MEMORY  OF  BIRDS.       19 

and  is  modifying  its  bill  from  the  ancestral 
wedge  shape  of  the  woodpecker's  beak,  to 
that  of  the  slender,  curved  mandibles  belong- 
ing to  the  thrushes  and  the  meadow-lark. 

The  house-wren  rarely  builds  its  nest  in  the 
crevices  of  cliffs  or  in  the  hollows  of  logs  and 
trees,  as  it  once  did.  It  seeks  the  habitations 
of  man  and  is  modifying  its  nest  architecture 
to  suit  the  new  situation. 

The  sap-sucker  (yellow-bellied  woodpecker) 
is  losing  the  power  to  protrude  its  tongue  far 
beyond  the  end  of  its  bill,  a  very  striking 
modification  going  on  apace  with  its  depart- 
ure from  the  true  woodpecker  habit  of  feed- 
ing. Some  of  the  woodpecker  species,  the 
hairy  woodpecker,  for  instance,  can  thrust 
forward  the  tongue  more  than  two  inches 
beyond  the  point  of  the  bill,  while  the  sap- 
sucker  can  reach  scarcely  one-third  of  an 
inch. 

In  the  case  of  wading  birds,  those  species 
which  have  chosen  to  live  near  small  streams 
have  shorter  legs  and  neck  than  species 
which  prefer  larger  streams,  lakes  or  sea- 
borders,  and,  taking  the  little  green  heron  as 
an  example,  as  our  streams  diminish  in  vol- 
ume year  by  year,  the  bird  modifies  its  habit 
in  accordance  with  necessity,  and  in  my 
mind  there  is  no  doubt  that  its  legs  and  neck 
will  be  affected,  in  the  course  of  a  compara- 
tively short  period,  to  a  noticeable  degree. 

The  blue- jay  is  either  a  corvine  croaker 
passing  into  the  song-bird's  estate,  or  a  song- 
bird whose  natural  desire  for  singing  is  fading 
away,  leaving  it  to  relapse  into  the  crow's 
unmusical  condition;  for  its  voice  has  a  strain 
of  genuine  melody  in  it  mixed  up,  almost 
comically,  with  the  harsh  discords  of  the  true 
crow-caw. 


20  SYLVAN  SECRETS. 

It  would  seem  that  this  power  of  self-modi- 
fication serves  the  bird  in  the  same  way  that 
the  inventive  and  constructive  faculties  serve 
man.  The  instance  of  the  soundless  flight  of 
night-birds  of  prey  is  a  striking  one.  A 
hawk  in  swooping  down  upon  a  quail  at  mid- 
day makes  a  loud  roaring  with  its  wings, 
while  an  owl  falling  by  night  upon  its  quarry 
is  as  silent  as  "  snow  on  wool."  The  stillness 
of  night  has  operated  for  countless  ages  to 
create  a  natural  desire  in  owls  for  the  power 
to  strike  their  prey  in  utter  silence,  and  the 
desire,  transmitted  by  heredity,  has  finally 
so  modified  the  bird's  wings  and  plumage  as 
to  respond  perfectly  to  the  persistent  thought. 

Birds  of  the  polar  areas  of  snow  and  ice 
are  white,  those  of  the  tropics  are  vari-colored 
and  brilliant-hued.  The  condition  in  each 
instance  has  been  reached  through  a  natural 
desire  to  hide  by  blending  with  the  prevailing 
tone  of  Nature.  Thus  the  quail  and  the  par- 
tridge, the  meadow-lark  and  the  flicker,  the 
snipes,  the  woodcock,  the  prairie  grouse  and, 
in  fact,  nearly  all  the  ground-feeding  birds, 
resemble  one  another  in  general  color  or  plu- 
mage-tone, simply  because  their  environment 
has  induced  parallelism  of  natural  desire— 
the  desire  to  blend  with  the  prevailing  brown 
tinge  of  their  feeding-places  as  the  most 
effective  protection  against  the  sharp  eyes  of 
their  enemies.  Some  of  the  game-birds  have 
even  acquired  the  power  to  withhold  their 
scent  from  foxes  and  wolves,  and  from  the 
sportsman's  dog  as  well.  There  is  a  good 
reason  why  this  desire  to  perfectly  disappear, 
so  to  speak,  in  the  color  of  the  environment, 
has  been  more  persistent  and  successful  in 
the  case  of  game-birds  than  in  that  of  any 
other.  On  account  of  the  sweetness  of  its 


MIND  AND  MEMORY  OF  BIRDS.      21 

flesh  the  game-bird  has  a  host  of  greedy  and 
ever-watchful  enemies,  and  therefore  its  life 
has  been  an  intensely  tragic  experience  from 
its  beginning  down  to  the  present  time. 

The  aquatic  birds,  viewed  in  the  light  of 
paleontology,  have  changed  less  than  any 
others  in  their  structure  and  habit ;  this  be- 
cause their  habitat  and  their  methods  of  feed- 
ing have  remained  constant  in  a  general  way. 
From  the  Ichthyornis  and  Aptornis  of  the 
cretaceous  shores  and  seas  down  to  the  terns 
of  the  present  time,  the  seas  have  been  the 
feeding  places  and  the  homes  of  this  sort  of 
birds,  and  the  food  has  changed  little  in  its 
character.  Probably  the  marine  fish-eating 
birds  are  all  of  very  ancient  origin,  and  have 
developed  very  slowly,  while  the  kingfishers 
and  other  fresh-water  birds  are,  compara- 
tively, of  recent  creation,  or  have  been  greatly 
modified  from  some  ancient  form,  because 
the  conditions  and  resources  of  fresh- water 
bodies  have  always  been  less  constant  than 
those  of  the  salt  oceans  and  seas. 

While  my  sojourn  at  the  old  gin-house 
lasted  I  made  the  herons  and  shore- birds  and 
the  noisy  songsters  of  the  pine  wood  and  live- 
oak  swamps  my  boon  companions.  I  was  not 
in  a  shooting  mood  most  of  the  time,  prefer- 
ring to  drift  about  in  my  "boat,  or  to  walk 
stealthily  among  the  wild  things,  watching 
their  movements  and  studying  their  attitudes 
— always  with  reference  to  the  suggestions 
contained  in  the  foregoing  notes.  It  is  curi- 
ous how  one's  imagination  helps  one  under 
such  circumstances,  by  lending  to  every  visi- 
ble thing  that  coloring  which  never  was  on 
sea  or  land.  I  soon  came  to  regard  my  stately 
herons  and  wide-winged  pelicans  as  venerable 
birds,  probably  older  than  the  land  upon 


22  SYLVAN  SECEETti. 

which  my  gin-house  stood.  Why  should  a 
heron  ever  die  of  old  age?  He  has  no  grief, 
no  sorrow,  no  nagging  conscience,  no  indiges- 
tion, no  tendency  towards  drunkenness  or 
other  vice.  Look  at  that  big  ash -blue  fellow 
yonder,  as  he  stands  beside  that  wisp  of  tall 
marsh-grass,  and  tell  me  when  and  where  he 
was  hatched ;  may  it  not  have  been  ten  thou- 
sand years  ago?  Perhaps  it  was  he  who  shed 
the  feather,  the  fine  impression  of  which  now 
rests  somewhere  in  the  lowest  stratum  of  the 
quaternary !  Brave  old  fellow !  he  lived  before 
the  western  mountains  were  lifted  out  of  the 
sea,  and  while  yet  the  upper  cretaceous  rocks 
were  sediment  held  in  suspension.  He  was 
too  wary  to  leave  his  bones  beside  those  of 
Hesperornis  and  Ichthyornisl  With  his 
jewel-like  eyes  he  has  seen  every  step  of 
man's  development. 

But  the  mocking-bird  yonder,  how  old  is 
he?  How  has  he  survived  the  great  upheav- 
als and  the  great  down-sinkings— the  floods 
and  the  ebbs?  It  is  not  known;  but  he  is 
here,  nevertheless,  as  young  and  fresh  and 
free  as  he  was  when  Adam  drew  the  first 
breath  of  a  living  soul.  What  migrations  and 
re-migrations  he  has  had  to  make  to  keep  on 
land  and  to  follow  the  shiftings  of  climate- 
centres,  during  all  these  geologic  oscillations ! 
The  time  was,  perhaps,  when  he  sang  in  fruit- 
fragrant  groves  around  the  North  pole;  for 
that  was  a  warm  and  luxuriant  spot  once,  as 
is  shown  by  the  vegetable  fossils  of  the  later 
rocks.  All  the  way  from  the  gulf -coast  north- 
ward to  where  the  paleozoic  deposits  dip  un- 
der the  eternal  ice  and  snow  of  the  boreal  re- 
gion are  found  traces  of  a  flora  which  grew 
under  tropical  and,  perhaps,  even  torrid  con- 
ditions of  climate.  The  age  of  riant  vegeta- 


MIND  AND  M&MOlir  OF  BIRDS.      23 

tion  and  of  summer  heat  was  followed  by  the 
gradual  coming  on  of  what  is  called  the 
glacial  age,  when  vast  accumulations  of  ice,  in 
the  form  of  glaciers,  swept  down  from  the  far 
north  and  destroyed  all  life  in  America,  as  far 
south  at  least  as  the  Ohio  River  valley.  Dur- 
ing the  time  this  enormous  body  of  ice  was 
accumulating  and  moving  down  in  the  form 
of  a  glacier,  toward  the  gulf,  our  birds  began 
to  feel  a  desire  to  move  away  southward  be- 
fore the  chilly  invader.  This  desire  was  not 
born  in  a  day,  or  a  year,  or  a  century;  it 
slowly  grew  by  hereditary  descent  and  accre- 
tion, so  to  say,  operating  differently  in  differ- 
ent species.  Some  birds  by  infinitesimal  de- 
grees modified  their  physiques  to  conform 
somewhat  to  the  exigencies  of  the  climatic 
changes;  others,  following  the  call  of  natural 
desire,  crept  away  in  the  direction  of  warm 
sea-currents  and  genial  sunshine  until  they 
were  huddled  in  some  lost  Atlantis,  some 
tropical  garden  of  preservation  washed  by 
tepid  ocean-streams  over  which  the  glacial 
rigor  could  not  prevail.  Then  came  another 
oscillation  of  Nature.  The  tropical  region 
began  to  return  toward  the  pole,  drawing  the 
birds  along  with  it,  and  now  here  they  are 
again  swarming  in  to  the  land  out  of  which 
the  ice-king  drove  them  hundreds  of  centuries 
ago! 

As  I  swung  in  my  hammock  under  the 
grimy  beams  of  my  gin-house,  listening  to 
the  mocking-birds'  songs  and  to  the  mellow 
moan  of  the  sea,  I  began  to  analyze  and  com- 
pare all  the  foregoing  facts,  and  it  seemed  to 
me  that  I  discovered  the  solution  of  this  mys- 
tery of  bird  migration  which  has  troubled 
naturalists  so  long. 

During  the  countless  centuries  of  the  qua- 


24  SYLVAN  SECRETS. 

ternary  age  there  was  a  series  of  climatic 
oscillations,  the  tropical  temperature  swaying 
back  and  forth  over  a  wide  area  from  north 
to  south.  The  birds  migrated  to  and  fro  un- 
der the  impulse  of  a  natural  desire  to  keep 
within  an  agreeable  habitat.  These  oscilla- 
tions of  temperature  were  on  a  large  scale ; 
but,  from  the  nature  of  things,  there  were 
intermediate  disturbances  of  a  like  character, 
and  of  far  slighter  eif ect.  No  doubt  the  birds 
resisted  these  changes  with  stubborn  persist- 
ency, giving  way  before  them  only  at  the 
last  moment,  and  returning  upon  their  haunts 
with  each  temporary  relaxation  of  the  icy 
grip,  to  be  driven  away  again  and  again 
through  a  long  series  of  generations.  This 
struggle  for  the  old  northern  home,  kept  up 
for  ages,  became  a  hereditament  of  bird- 
nature,  an  instinct,  as  we  call  it,  a  natural 
desire,  indeed,  irresistible  and  perpetual. 
The  migratory  birds  are  the  old  birds  of  the 
north.  With  them  the  polar  region  is  a  dim 
and  tender  memory  transmitted  from  a  re- 
mote ancestral  source. 

The  non-migratory  species  are  those  birds 
whose  physiques  were  long  ago  so  modified 
that  natural  desire  for  a  lost  habitat  was  ex- 
tinguished and  equilibrium  reached. 

The  aquatic  and  semi-aquatic  birds  are 
mostly  very  distant  migrators,  and  yet,  ap- 
parently, they  have  the  least  need  to  migrate 
at  all.  Why,  for  instance,  should  a  Florida 
gallinule  leave  the  plashy,  lily-lined  margins 
of  the  southern  lakes  in  spring  and  go  far 
north  to  less  eligible  waters?  Why  do  so 
many  wood  duck,  teal,  snipe,  herons  and 
bitterns  come  out  of  the  South  to  breed? 
The  fact  that  many,  very  many,  of  these 
birds  do  not  migrate  at  all  is  strong  proof,  I 


MIND  AND  MEMORY  OF  BIRDS.      25 

think,  that  the  hereditary  memory  is  growing 
weaker  year  by  year,  and  that  the  time  may 
come  when  migration  will  cease.  In  many 
cases  the  need  for  migration  does  not  exist, 
therefore  the  desire  is  merely  traditionary,  as 
it  were,  and  must  be  fading  out.  The  mock- 
ing-bird's habit  is  an  instance  of  the  imperfect 
migratory  memory.  Why  should  a  few  of 
this  species  come  as  far  north  as  the  Ohio 
valley  to  nest  when  the  great  body  of  them 
are  happy  to  remain  far  south?  Such  a  ques- 
tion might  be  asked  regarding  many  other 
species.  The  answer  is  to  be  found  in  trans- 
mitted memory  and  hereditary  desire. 


BESIDE  THE  GULF  WITH  &USKIN. 

LET  me  sketch  a  bit  of  landscape  before  I 
begin  to  write,  a  bit  with  which  I  have  been 
so  charmed  day  after  day  that  I  have  not 
looked  at  anything  else.  The  point  of  view  is 
a  high  swell  of  sand  thinly  set  with  tall,  slen- 
der pine  trees,  and  our  seat  is  a  smooth, 
weather-beaten  log.  Behind  us  is  a  dense 
forest,  stretching  away  for  miles,  a  forest  in 
which  the  blooms  and  tassels  are  beginning 
to  show,  albeit  it  is  the  second  day  of  Feb- 
ruary. Before  us,  and  but  150  yards  away, 
shines  the  white  beach  and  pale  blue  water  of 
the  Gulf  of  Mexico.  There  is  a  sound  over- 
head, a  strange  moaning,  made  by  the  breeze 
in  the  pine-tops,  and  the  rhythmic  sea-boom 
seems  to  flow  close  to  the  ground  at  our  feet. 
We  can  see  the  sky  in  violet  streaks  and  frag- 
ments through  the  foliage,  and  we  can  catch 
at  times  glimpses  of  stately  ships  standing  far 
out  along  the  horizon,  apparently  motionless, 
but  in  reality  bowling  along  before  a  good 
breeze  "from  lands  of  snow  to  lands  of  sun." 
The  temperature  of  the  air  is  such  that  we 
need  no  wraps,  and  yet  are  not  too  warm, 
and  there  is  a  June-like  balm  felt  with  every 
breath  we  draw.  Here  is  where  my  friend 
and  I  come  to  lounge— to  "  loaf  and  invite  our 
souls."  We  have  been  reading  Euskin,  too, 
or  rather  my  friend  has  been  reading  aloud 
to  me,  while  I  have  lain  in  a  most  receptive 
mood,  watching  the  ever  fresh  color-changes 
of  the  landscape.  Ruskin  describes  clouds, 
2G 


WITH  RUSKIN.  W 

but  how  could  he  ever  find  a  phrase  with 
which  to  picture  a  gulf -cap,  as  I  see  it  yonder 
in  the  far  south-west,  suspended  between  sea 
and  sky?  The  fact  is  that  here  on  the  gulf 
coast  I  find  some  of  the  most  delightful 
weather  and  many  of  the  most  charming  bits 
of  scenery  I  have  ever  enjoyed.  One  could 
almost  afford  to  have  a  sharp  attack  of  in- 
flammatory rheumatism  in  order  to  get  sent 
down  here  (for  a  month  or  two  0f  convales- 
cence) where  one  may  lie  on  a  log  like  an  alli- 
gator and  listen  to  the  wind  and  the  sea  and 
the  roaring  pines,  while  an  obliging  friend 
sits  buzzing  and  humming  over  a  volume  of 
Ruskin  like  a  bee  over  a  flower.  Few  books 
will  bear  reading  in  the  open  air,  in  the  full, 
strong  light  of  nature.  Even  Ruskin  would 
suffer  under  the  test. 

How  apparent  becomes  the  utter  isolation 
of  a  mind  like  Ruskin's  when  one  gets  thor- 
oughly apart  with  it  and  at  a  great  distance 
from  the  clashing  activities  of  worldly  life ! 
Emerson,  Carlyle,  and  Ruskin— -three  lonely 
spirits  talking  to  mankind  in  the  language  of 
seers  and  prophets,  and  all  without  much  re- 
sult, so  far  as  effecting  their  purposes  is  con- 
cerned. This  is  good  mind-food,  all  this  bril- 
liant literature,  suggestive,  thought-provok- 
ing, soul-delighting;  but  the  old  world  and 
the  new  world  heed  not  its  philosophy,  flinch 
not  under  its  goads,  adopt  not  one  suggestion 
it  offers.  A  few  read  and  are  strangely  af- 
fected; they  feel  a  fertilizing  element  flung 
into  their  minds,  and  they  wonder  why  all 
the  world  is  not  down  at  Carlyle's,  or  Emer- 
son's, or  Ruskin's  feet;  and  yet  even  these 
few  do  not  go  much  farther  than  mere  recep- 
tivity impels.  The  activities  of  life  are,  in- 
deed, little  influenced  by  the  great  abstract 


28  SYLVAN  SECRETS. 

thinkers.  This  world  is  a  material  one,  and, 
hate  materialism  as  we  justly  may.  it  is  af- 
fected most  by  material  forces.  One  sees  this 
more  plainly  when  one  is  at  a  distance  from 
the  world,  shut  up,  so  to  speak,  in  the  heart 
of  nature,  where  one  may  be  secure  in  peep- 
ing forth  to  watch 

With  an  eye  serene 

The  very  pulse  of  the  machine. 

Hence,  reading  Buskin  in  the  open  air  of  the 
pine  woods,  with  the  blue  gulf  of  Mexico  pur- 
ring at  your  feet,  is  quite  different  from  perus- 
ing him  in  a  closely-curtained  and  overheated 
library.  While  my  friend  was  reading  yes- 
terday, in  the  mellowest  tones  ipiaginable, 
and  while  I  was  watching  a  steamer  trail  a 
dim  line  of  smoke  along  the  wavering  hori- 
zon, lo!  the  first  mocking-bird  song  of  the 
season  came  rippling  forth  from  a  neighbor- 
ing thicket  of  wax-myrtle  bushes.  You  know 
these  myrtles  bear  thick  bunches  of  fragrant, 
oily  berries,  from  which  the  people  of  this  re- 
gion formerly  made  wax  for  candles  used  by 
Catholics  in  certain  church  and  funeral  for- 
malities. We  forgot  Ruskin  in  giving  our 
ears  over  to  this  fresh  music  bubbling  from 
the  well-spring  of  nature.  Think  of  it,  a  gen- 
uine gush  of  bird-song  on  the  second  day  of 
February!  And  such  a  song,  too!  bright, 
airiose,  full  of  spirit,  and  yet  rich  and  deep^ 
almost  too  melancholy  at  times,  running 
through  a  hundred  changes  in  as  many  sec- 
onds, and  filling  the  whole  wood  with  mel- 
ody. It  is  very  unusual  for  a  mocking-bird 
to  sing  so  early  as  this,  but  the  weather  has 
been  superb,  and  already  the  violets  are  bloom- 
ing blue  and  white  all  through  the  forests 
along  this  coast.  My  friend  threw  aside  the 


WITH  RUSKIN.  29 

volume  of  Ruskin  and  went  slipping  away 
toward  the  thicket  in  a  vain  attempt  to  sur- 
prise the  singer  at  his  song.  Here  is  fame! 
The  greatest  of  living  art  critics  is  forgotten 
in  the  presence  of  American  song-birds !  For 
one  I  am  patriotic  enough  to  be  proud  of  the 
bird's  superiority.  Whatever  is  good  and  at 
the  same  time  genuinely  American,  is  worth 
honoring,  if  it  is  nothing  but  a  song  of  free- 
dom sung  out  of  season  by  a  free  wild  bird. 
But  the  mocking-bird  is  far  more  typical  of 
America  than  is  the  eagle,  for  it  is  found  only 
in  our  country,  and  then  its  restless  and  en- 
terprising disposition  is  the  very  counterpart 
of  that  which  has  placed  our  nation  in  the 
fore-front  of  progress  within  so  short  a  period 
of  time.  It  is  interesting  to  go  back  through 
the  writings  of  the  naturalists  and  note  how 
they  all  have  done  homage  to  the  mocking- 
bird, le  moqueur  as  Buffon  called  it.  Fer- 
nandes,  Nieremberg,  Catesby,  Bartram,  Wil- 
son, Audubon,  Nuttall,  Baird,  and  Cones  have 
built  monuments  of  praise  to  it,  poets  have 
sung  to  it,  musicians  have  tried  to  imitate  it, 
and  everybody  has  admired  it.  No  wonder 
then  if  its  song  drove  Ruskin  from  our  minds. 
The  digression  was  short,  however,  for,  like 
every  other  true  genius,  the  mocking-bird  is 
not  overgenerous  with  song-giving,  and  al- 
ways quits  before  he  has  quite  satisfied  you. 

My  reading  friend  began  where  he  had  left 
oil:  with  a  passage  like  this:  "The  guilty 
thieves  of  Europe,  the  real  sources  of  deadly 
war  in  it,  are  the  capitalists. "  From  a  man 
who  was  born  a  capitalist  and  who  has  never 
known  the  need  of  a  dollar,  that  is  a  strange 
assertion,  but  if  any  rich  man  has  or  ever  had 
the  right  to  make  it  John  Raskin  is  he.  A 
capitalist  who  gives  $50,000  per  annum  to  the 


30  SYLVAN  SECRETS. 

poor  is  quite  entitled  to  air  his  opinions  touch- 
ing the  doings  of  his  own  tribe  of  men,  and 
we  are  bound  to  give  his  opinions  consider- 
able weight.  But  when  one  is  in  the  woods 
and  as  free  as  the  breeze  one  is  apt  to  smile  at 
any  mere  opinion.  At  this  distance  men  ap- 
pear to  be  divided  into  two  classes, — viz. :  cap- 
italists and  those  who  would  very  much  like 
to  be  capitalists.  The  capitalists  are  glad 
they  are  capitalists,  and  the  others  are  angry 
because  they  are  not  capitalists.  I  say  that 
thus  it  looks  to  a  free  man  far  down  in  the 
Southern  woods,  no  matter  what  Ruskin  or 
the  anarchists  may  say.  It  is  curious  to  note 
how  surely  every  argument  against  the  nat- 
ural processes  of  human  intercourse  and  gov- 
ernment tends  toward  anarchy.  Worldly 
wisdom  long  ago  constructed,  by  a  process 
cf  crystallization,  the  only  true  economy — 
namely,  that  controlled  by  the  principle  of 
make  and  keep.  The  laborer  is  worthy  of  his 
hire  and  he  must  have  it,  but  he  must  save 
a  part  of  it  if  he  would  become  independent. 
v.This  is  all  that  can  be  said  from  now  till 

o- v  *  s  *  i  doomsday.     The  laborer  is  the  only  free  man. 

<;  +*•*'  So  soon  as  he  ceases  to  be  a  laborer  he  is  no 
longer  free,  and  so  the  danger  to  organized 
laborers  bound  in  a  body  is  the  loss  of  per- 
sonal liberty  in  the  loss  of  the  right  to  labor 
at  will. 

But  we  must  not  let  Ruskin  lead  us  into  the 
labor  question ;  for  how  can  we  think  clearly 
on  such  a  subject  here  in  this  dim  wood,  with 
the  lazy,  balmy  breeze  fanning  us,  and  the 
gulf  waves  murmuring  at  our  feet?  Give  us 
a  vision  of  the  stones  of  Venice,  O  large- 
hearted  but  impractical  Ruskin!  or  lead  us 
over  to  Rome,  or  to  Verona  in  a  trance,  but 
do  not  mention  political  or  domestic  economy 


WITH  RUSKIN.  31 

again,  for  we  are  idlers  and  health-hunters, 
lounging  along  the  gulf  shore  and  reading  for 
pleasure,  not  for  profit. 

Indeed,  one  must  read  for  pleasure  when 
one  would  thoroughly  enjoy  Buskin,  and  then 
what  a  charming  outdoor  companion  he  is. 
His  theories  and  quirks  and  carpings  all  dis- 
appear in  his  brilliant  phrasing  and  musical 
cadences.  Color,  color,  color,  harmony,  finely- 
sketched  outlines,  impressions  set  against  the 
most  witching  backgrounds,  and  above  all  a 
rare  sincerity  ever  present,  and  saturating 
the  whole  like  the  juice  in  ripe  fruit,  or  like 
the  sunshine  in  summer  air.  One  must  mix 
one's  figures  in  attempting  to  characterize 
Buskin's  style,  for  it  is  as  changeable  and 
curious  as  the  inside  of  a  kaleidoscope.  He 
sees  things  from  an  isolated  and  exceptional 
point  of  view,  but  he  is  never  purposely  ec- 
centric or  odd  in  his  ways  of  expression.  He 
is  original,  and,  more,  he  is  always  strikingly 
picturesque,  so  that  when  you  read  his  works 
in  the  open  air,  or  hear  them  read  there,  it  is 
almost  as  if  his  figures  and  thoughts  stood  out 
upon  the  landscape  against  the  sky  or  the  sea, 
for  above  all  he  is  an  artist  of  the  best  sort 
and  harmonizes  his  creations  with  the  great 
scheme  of  nature.  He  believes  that  he  is  a 
realist  of  the  pre-Baphaelite  kind,  but  he  is, 
nevertheless,  a  romancer,  a  thorough-going 
idealist,  always  glorifying  and  beautifying 
something  common  and  vulgar  till  it  shines 
like  a  sunlit  cloud.  Indeed,  even  nature  is 
not  a  realist  of  the  analytical,  microscopic 
sort  in  her  best  work,  for  she  is  not  content 
with  showing  things  just  as  they  are,  but 
must  hang  a  luminous  atmosphere  about  them 
and  touch  them  with  heavenly  colors.  She 
knows  the  blue  enchantment  of  distance,  the 


32  SYLVAN  SECRETS. 

value  of  romantic  suggestions,  the  power  of 
dim  lines  and  mysterious  shadows.  She 
sketches  here,  she  indicates  an  effect  yonder, 
at  one  moment  finishing  the  minutest  details, 
at  another  dashing  a  formless  wonder  on  sky, 
or  sea,  or  mountain  side,  but  she  never  stops 
work  to  analyze  motives  or  to  call  attention 
to  her  methods. 

"Not  with  the  skill  of  an  hour,  nor  of  a 
life,"  reads  my  friend,  "  nor  of  a  century,  but 
with  the  help  of  numberless  souls,  a  beautiful 
thing  must  be  done."  Ah,  Mr.  Ruskin,  you 
are  right.  By  such  a  plan  all  creation  has 
been  wrought.  Nature  knows  it.  With  the 
help  of  numberless  energies  the  seed  germi- 
nates, the  plant  grows,  the  leaves  leap  forth, 
and  the  flower  flashes  like  a  sun.  What  eons 
of  years  it  has  taken  to  build  a  rose  up  from 
the  almost  formless  plant  sketch  set  in  the 
ancient  rocks !  What  a  slow  process  has  been 
the  building  of  the  present  man  up  from  the 
man  of  the  cave  and  the  peat-bog !  Nature  is 
never  in  a  hurry  save  when  in  a  destructive 
mood.  She  broods  over  her  working  plans 
and  saturates  her  materials  with  life  from  a 
myriad  sources  before  her  dream  begins  to 
take  material  form.  Ruskin  disputes  himself, 
however,  and  repudiates  this  doctrine  pres- 
ently, for  he  affects  to  despise  the  practical 
part  of  paleontology  and  archeology,  and  to 
laugh  at  the  scientists  in  general.  Perhaps 
he  is  in  accord  with  nature  here,  too,  for  she 
disputes  herself  and  denies  her  acts,  whenever 
it  can  serve  her  turn,  to  say  nothing  of  the 
way  she  snubs  the  scientists.  "  Does  not  Mr. 
Darwin  show  you  that  you  can't  wash  the 
slugs  out  of  a  lettuce  without  disrespect  to 
your  ancestors?  "  reads  my  friend,  and  I  see 
a  smile  of  deep  satisfaction  on  his  refined 


WITH  BUSKIN.  33 

face,  for  he  cannot  endure  evolution.  But  it 
occurs  to  me  that  the  choice  between  a  slug 
on  one  hand  and  a  hideous  cannibal  on  the 
other  gives  one  no  great  aesthetic  latitude  in 
selecting  a  forefather.  It  is  not  what  we 
have  risen  from  that  should  make  us  blush, 
but  what  we  are  now.  Our  progeny,  not  our 
ancestors,  should  make  us  glad  or  sad.  All 
the  more  honor  to  the  man  if  indeed  he  has 
come  up  from  the  germ  in  the  old  dust  of 
chaos,  has  wriggled  past  the  worms,  swam 
past  the  fishes,  outstripped  the  birds,  and 
made  himself  the  lord,  of  all  the  animals.  In- 
deed, as  I  sit  here  in  this  tropical  springtide, 
with  my  eyes  full  of  color-visions  and  my 
ears  full  of  soothing  sounds,  I  am  willing  to 
consider  myself  a  manifestation  of  nature's 
patient  work,  the  end  of  a  labor  begun  when 
life  first  stirred  in  the  most  favored  spot  of 
the  earth. 

The  trouble  with  Ruskin  is  that  he  has  come 
to  look  upon  art  as  the  whole  of  life.  He 
would  make  the  world  a  great  studio— he 
would  change  human  passion  into  a  figure  to 
be  drawn  on  canvas  and  cut  in  marble.  Hear 
my  friend  read  again : 

"Do  you  fancy  a  Greek  workman  ever 
made  a  vase  by  measurement?  He  dashed  it 
from  his  hand  on  the  wheel,  and  it  was  beau- 
tiful ;  and  a  Venetian  glass-blower  swept  you 
a  curve  of  crystal  from  the  end  of  his  pipe ; 
and  Reynolds  or  Tintoretto  swept  a  curve  of 
color  from  their  pencils,  as  a  musician  the  ca- 
dence of  a  note,  unerring  and  to  be  measured, 
if  you  please,  afterward,  with  the  exactitude 
of  divine  law." 

This  is  a  fine  sketch  of  true  genius;  but  I 
look  at  the  slender,  shining  wake  on  the  water 
yonder,  where  a  wild  duck  has  been  swim- 
3 


34  SYLVAN  SECRETS. 

ming,  and  I  note  the  same  freedom  of  curve, 
the  same  unconscious  sweep  along  the  line  of 
beauty  which  has  immortalized  the  painter, 
the  glass-blower,  and  the  carver.  And  hark ! 
the  mocking-bird  again— a  gush  of  artless  mel- 
ody rippling  away  through  the  slumberous 
wood— sweet  as  the  flute-notes  of  Marsyas  or 
the  lyre-chords  of  Apollo. 

I  do  not  hear  half  of  what  my  friend  reads, 
for  how  can  I  listen  to  sea  and  wind  and  pine 
moan  and  bird  song  and  Euskiii  all  at  once. 
I  watch  the  fishing-smack  out  yonder,  beat- 
ing in  against  the  breeze.  Now  the  mainsail 
is  white  against  the  sky ;  anon  it  is  black  as 
ink ;  again  it  is  gray  touched  with  brown.  I 
used  to  see  pictures  of  ships  with  gloomy  sails 
blotching  an  almost  indigo  sky,  and  I  thought 
the  pictures  in  bad  color.  Now  I  feel  how 
true  they  were.  Even  Euskin  might  make 
the  same  mistake  in  a  criticism.  This  for  in- 
stance : 

Both  Raphael  and  Rembrandt  are  masters, 
indeed ;  but  neither  of  them  masters  of  light 
and  shade,  in  treatment  of  which  the  first  is 
always  false,  the  second  always  vulgar.  The 
only  absolute  masters  of  light  and  shade  are 
those  who  never  make  you  think  of  light  and 
shade  more  than  nature  herself  does. 

But  I  find  that  nature  makes  me  think  of 
light  and  shade  all  the  time.  Indeed,  I  see 
nothing  else  in  nature  so  emphasized  here,  so 
accentuated  there,  so  graded,  so  obtruded,  so 
dashed  about  and  experimented  with,  so  in- 
sisted upon  at  every  turn,  as  light  and  shade, 
and  he  must  be  a  vigorous  brushman,  cer- 
tainly, who  can  get  into  a  picture  more  light 
and  shade  than  nature  habitually  uses  on  hey 
smallest  canvas.  Even  now  the  sails  of  the 
smack  are  shining  like  a  flake  of  moonshine 


WITH  BUSKIN.  35 

against  the  dark  magnolias  of  a  low  shore 
line,  as  it  glides  into  the  little  harbor. 

After  all  even  Buskin,  is  hard  to  read  in  the 
"  lap  of  nature."  Give  me  something  lighter, 
a  volume  of  Keats  or  Wordsworth;  or— no, 
give  me  nothing  by  nobody ;  let  me  lie  in  this 
balmy  spot  and  dream  and  see  visions  and  be 
free  from  the  cunning  of  genius  and  the  tricks 
of  talent. 


CERYLE  ALCYON. 

THE  kingfisher  is  a  dash  of  bright  blue  in 
every  choice  bit  of  brookside  poetry  or  paint- 
ing; he  is  a  warm  fragment  of  tropical  life 
and  color,  left  over  from  the  largess  be- 
stowed upon  our  frigid  world  by  one  of  those 
fervid  periods  of  ancient  creative  force  so 
dear  to  the  imagination,  and  so  vaguely 
limned  on  the  pages  of  science.  The  bird, 
by  some  fine  law,  keeps  its  artistic  value  fully 
developed.  You  never  see  Alcyon  out  of 
keeping  with  the  environment;  even  when 
going  into  the  little  dark  hole  in  the  earth, 
where  its  nest  is  hidden,  the  flash  of  tur- 
quoise light  with  which  it  disappears  leaves  a 
sheen  on  the  observer's  memory  as  fascinat- 
ing and  evasive  as  some  fleeting  poetical  al- 
lusion. 

Ceryle  Alcyon  I  how  sweet  the  name  in  the 
midst  of  those  jarring  sounds  invented  by  sci- 
ence. Coming  upon  it  in  the  catalogues  is 
like  hearing  a  cultured  voice  in  the  midst  of 
a  miner's  broil,  or  like  meeting  a  beautiful 
child  in  a  cabinet  of  fossils.  Ceryle  Alcyon 
suggests  sunshine,  bright  water,  dreamy 
skies,  and  that  rich  foliage  growing  near 
streams— a  foliage  to  which  the  adjective 
lush  clings  like  some  rather  ornamental  cater- 
pillar, with  an  underhint  of  classical  affinity 
very  tenuous  and  filmy.  It  is  a  disappoint- 
ment to  one's  imagination  at  first  to  find  out 
that  so  beautiful  a  creature  as  the  A  Icyon  can- 
not sing ;  but  there  is  just  compensation  in 
36 


CERYLE  ALCYON.  37 

the  knowledge  which  soon  comes,  that  in- 
strumental music  is  the  bird's  forte— he  plays 
on  the  water  as  on  a  dulcimer,  bringing  out 
pure  liquid  notes  (at  long  intervals,  indeed) 
too  sweet  and  elusive  to  be  fixed  in  any 
written  score.  To  watch  Ceryle  Alcyon 
strike  the  silver  strings  of  a  summer  brook 
and  set  them  to  vibrating  is  worth  the  sacri- 
fice of  any  leisure  hour.  It  is  the  old  touch 
of  Apollo,  swift,  sure,  masterful,  virile,  and 
yet  tender  as  the  very  heart  of  nature. 
' '  Plash ! "  A  sudden  gleam  of  silver, 
amethyst,  and  royal  purple,  a  whorl  as  of  a 
liquid  bloom  on  the  water,  rings  and  dim- 
ples and  bubbles,  and  in  the  midst  of  it  all, 
the  indescribable  sound  from  the  smitten 
stream,  its  one  chord  rendered  to  perfection. 
Nature  sketched  the  kingfisher,  in  the  first 
place,  with  a  certain  humorous  expression, 
which  still  lurks  in  the  overlarge  crest  and  al- 
most absurdly  short  legs ;  but  the  bird  itself  is 
always  in  earnest.  It  may  look  at  times  like 
a  bright,  sharp  exclamation  point  at  the  close 
of  some  comic  passage  in  the  phenakism  of 
nature,  but  it  is  the  very  embodiment  of 
sincerity;  in  fact,  the  birds  are  all  realists 
of  the  prosiest  kind.  One  might  as  well  look 
for  something  large  and  morally  lifting  in 
a  minutely  analytical  novel,  as  to  expect  a 
bird  to  be  sentimental.  A  worm — in  the  case 
of  the  kingfisher  a  minnow— is  the  highest 
object  of  avian  ambition — the  realist  dotes  on 
one's  motive  in  twisting  one's  thumbs — and  or- 
nithic life  does  not  generate  poetry.  The 
kingfisher  knows  his  brook  from  source  to 
mouth,  for  he  has  conned  it  during  countless 
ages.  Not  that  he  has  lived  so  long  individ- 
ually, the  knowledge  exists  in  heredity — the 
transmitted  sum  of  ten  thousand  ancestral 


38  SYLVAN  SECRETS. 

lives  devoted  to  the  one  end,  analysis  of  the 
brook,  minute  observation  of  the  minnow's 
tricksy  ways,  the  time  to  strike,  in  a  word, 
how  to  get  a  living  on  the  wing.  He  has 
gazed  into  the  wavering  shadowy  water  so 
long  that  he  has  become  habitually  given  to 
a  see-saw  motion  suggestive  of  vertigo  in  a 
harmless  form.  I  have  lain  on  a  favored 
spot  and  looked,  with  half -closed  eyes,  far 
down  the  sheeny  course  of  a  rivulet  at  the 
flight  of  this  happy  knight  of  the  fish-spear 
as  he  came  toward  me,  and  I  am  sure  there 
is  joine  obscure  correlation  between  the 
motion  of  his  sky-mailed  wings  and  that  of 
the  flowing  water. 

Evolution  tinges  everything.  One  grows 
like  what  one  contemplates,  and  Alcyon  may 
well  be  said  to  have  grown,  through  ages  of 
transmitted  and  accumulating  contemplation, 
like  the  swaying  and  lapsing  water  he  was 
created  to  love.  But  his  voice  is  the  very 
irony  of  mirth,  a  derisive  and  soulless  chuckle, 
sounding  like  one  long,  rasping  note  broken 
up  into  a  score  of  rusty  fragments  and  shaken 
through  a  sieve;  indeed,  his  vocal  organs, 
including  his  tongue,  are  rudimentary,  shut- 
ting away  the  possibility  of  song.  Wilson 
likens  the  cry  to  the  sound  of  a  watchman's 
rattle,  but  it  has  an  expression  of  its  own,  in 
consonance  with  that  of  the  babbling  waves 
and  rustling  acquatic  plants.  Stripped  of  its 
entourage,  it  closely  resembles  the  chattering, 
rarer  cry  of  the  tree-frog. 

Our  belted  Alcyon  is  an  expert  flyer, 
balancing  himself  adroitly  in  the  air  above  a 
pool  or  rapid,  until  he  fixes  the  precise  lurk- 
ing-place of  his  prey,  then  swooping  down 
with  almost  electrical  quickness  into  the  water 
to  strike  it.  When  in  level  flight  the  bird 


CERYLE  ALCYON.  39 

has  a  peculiarly  flattened  appearance  for  one 
of  its  bulk,  which  gives  its  big  head  and 
long,  thick  bill  accentuated  prominence 
verging  on  the  ludicrous  in  effect.  At  rest 
it  appears  to  sit  unnecessarily  close  to  its 
feet,  so  to  speak,  its  short  legs  being  much 
bent,  as  if  in  readiness  for  a  leap  into  the  air. 
Therefore,  for  obvious  reasons,  the  kingfisher 
has  been  the  despair  of  artists,  luring  them 
with  incomparable  colors  and  repelling  them 
with  absurdly  unmanageable  attitudes  and 
outlines.  The  poet  even  must  falter  at  the 
mouth  of  £he  bird's  dismal  subterraneous 
den,  wherein  are  stored  the  beautiful  white 
eggs.  This  semi-reptilian  nest  habit,  not 
much  better  than  that  of  the  land  turtle,  is 
singularly  out  of  keeping  with  the  beautiful 
cleanliness  of  the  kingfisher's  aerial  and 
aquatic  life.  So  nice,  indeed,  is  he,  for  the 
most  part,  that  water  will  not  wet  him  when 
he  plunges  into  it,  and  he  even  comes  out  of  his 
dank,  musty  burrow  without  a  touch  of  dirt 
011  his  resplendent  feathers. 

The  family  (Alcedinidce)  to  which  Ceryle 
Alcyon  belongs,  consists  of  nineteen  genera 
and  over  a  hundred  species,  but  the  fish- 
eating  members  are  the  only  burrowers, 
probably,  while  the  insect-eating  and  reptile- 
catching  ones  nest,  as  a  rule,  in  the  hollows 
of  trees.  We  have  but  one  genus  (Ceryle) 
and  two  species  in  the  United  States,  the 
second  species  being  the  Texas  green  king- 
fisher (Ceryle  Americana  cabanisi).  Alcyon 
ranges  as  far  north  as  Michigan,  even  much 
farther,  oscillating  back  and  forth  with  that 
weather  temperature  which  keeps  the  small 
streams  free  of  ice.  Leaving  Michigan  in 
early  autumn,  where  I  saw  Alcyon  on  the 
northernmost  point  of  the  Leelenaw  penin- 


40  SYLVAN  SECRETS. 

sula,  I  reached  St.  Augustine,  Florida,  in  the 
first  week  in  November,  finding  the  bird  on 
all  the  streams  that  I  examined  between  the 
two  points. 

It  has  always  struck  me  as  most  singular 
that  minks,  weasels,  and  snakes  do  not  ex- 
terminate Ceryle  Alcyon  on  account  of  the 
burrowing  habit.  Many  of  the  nest-burrows 
that  I  have  explored  have  been  quite  large 
enough  for  an  averaged-sized  mink  to  enter, 
and  the  least  of  them  would  have  been 
traversed  easily  by  a  weasel,  to  say  nothing 
of  snakes.  Of  course,  in  the  incubating  sea- 
son the  bird  might  guard  the  nest;  but  it 
would  seem  that  the  young  must  be  terribly 
exposed ;  still  not  more  so,  perhaps,  than  those 
of  the  whippoorwill. 

The  burrow  is  usually  in  the  clayey  bank  or 
bluff  of  a  stream,  entering  almost  horizontally 
to  a  distance  of  from  two  to  ten  feet ;  but  I 
found  one  that  descended  vertically  two  feet 
and  then  turned  at  about  right-angles.  This 
was  near  the  edge  of  a  brook  bluff  in  Middle 
Indiana. 

Drawing  upon  my  notes  and  my  recollec- 
tions of  Ceryle  Alcyon,  I  see  again  the  hun- 
dreds of  trout-brooks  and  bass-streams  I 
have  whipped  from  the  Manistee  to  the  Kissi- 
mee,  and  all  the  little  rivers  I  have  voyaged 
upon  from  the  Boardman  to  Pearl  River,  but 
the  one  stream  that  I  remember  as  fairly 
haunted  with  this  bird  is  the  Salliquoy,  a 
strong  rivulet  in  the  hill-country  of  Cherokee, 
Georgia.  In  a  half  rotten  tulip  pirogue  I 
made  a  slow  voyage  down  this  stream  during 
the  last  of  April  and  the  first  of  May,  a  sea- 
son when  the  leaves  and  flowers  of  that  wild, 
strange  region  are  at  the  fullest  stage  of  their 
development.  I  started  far  up  among  the 


CERYLE  ALCYON.  41 

little  mountain  billows  that  break  around  the 
north-eastern  rim  of  Dry  Valley  and  worked 
down  to  the  beautiful  and  deep  Coosawattee. 
It  appears  to  my  memory  now  that  nearly 
every  bough  that  swung  over  the  water  bore 
its  belted  kingfisher,  while  the  sound  of  their 
diving  in  the  shallows  was  almost  continuous. 
I  dare  say  distance  has  trebled  the  number  of 
birds  and  exaggerated  their  activity,  but  no- 
where else  have  I  spent  so  happy  a  fortnight 
with  Alcyon.  I  remember  that  my  compan- 
ion remarked,  with  perfect  youthful  sincer- 
ity, that  it  was  a  comfort  to  realize  the  ina- 
bility of  the  kingfishers  to  catch  the  two- 
pound  bass  we  were  angling  for.  This  same 
companion,  standing  in  the  stern  of  our 
pirogue,  balancing  himself  like  the  born  ca- 
noeist that  he  was,  and  playing  one  of  those 
gamey  mountain  bass,  was  as  picturesque  a 
figure  as  ever  delighted  an  artist  or  empha- 
sized a  landscape.  He  was  the  prince  of 
archers,  too,  and  many  a  whistling  shaft  he 
sped  at  the  wild  things  in  the  air  and  on  the 
banks.  So  intense  was  his  sportman's  delight 
in  every  phase  of  outdoor  excitement  that  it 
was  almost  painful  to  witness  his  ecstasy  of 
hesitation  when  one  fine  morning,  just  as  he 
had  hooked  a  large  fighting  bass,  which  was  de- 
termined to  break  out  of  the  water,  he  saw  an 
ibis,  a  rare  stranger  in  that  region,  standing 
not  more  than  forty  yards  from  him.  His 
bow  and  arrows  lay  at  his  feet,  the  bass  was 
demanding  the  strictest  attention,  a  word 
would  scare  the  bird  away !  I  forbear  to  fill  in 
the  sketch.  The  reader  may  finish  it  to  suit 
himself. 

But  to  get  back  to  Ceryle  Alcyon  and  its 
ways.  It  is  probable  that  Haley ornis  toliapi- 
cus,  a  fossil  of  the  eocene,  may  have  some  re- 


42  SYLVAN  SECRETS. 

mote  relationship  to  our  bird,  but  the  testi- 
mony of  this  does  not  amount  to  evidence. 
We  must  take  Alcyon  as  he  is,  without  any 
genealogical  table  or  ancient  armorial  relics. 
He  is  not  an  aristocrat,  if  the  index  of  aris- 
tocracy is  a  well-formed  foot,  for,  like  all  his 
/amily,  he  has  but  three  good  toes,  and  they 
are  as  rough  and  ugly  as  warts.  Compared 
with  those  of  the  mocking-bird,  indeed,  his 
feet  appear  scarcely  more  than  rudimentary 
(about  on  a  par  with  his  vocal  organs,  advanc- 
ing the  comparison  so  as  to  weigh  his  rattling 
laugh  with  the  ecstatic  song  of  Mimuspolyg- 
lottus),  still  he  perches  very  firmly  and,  after 
a  fashion,  gracefully.  His  descent  upon  a 
minnow  is  a  miracle  of  motion,  accompanied 
by  a  surpassing  feat  of  vision.  We  will 
imagine  him  seated  on  a  bough  thirty  feet 
above  the  brook- stream.  The  sunshine  comes 
down  in  flakes  like  burning  snow  upon  the 
twinkling,  palpitating  water,  making  the 
surface  flicker  and  glimmer  in  a  way  to  dis- 
tract any  eye.  Down  in  this  water  is  the 
minnow  which  Alcyon  is  to  catch  and  swal- 
low, a  minnow  whose  sides  are  silver  just 
touched  with  gold,  flitting  and  flashing  here 
and  there,  never  still,  flippant  as  the  wavelets 
themselves.  Mark  the  bird's  attitude  and  ex- 
pression as  they  blend  into  a  sort  of  serio- 
comic enigma — crest  erect  and  bristling,  eyes 
set  and  burning,  bill  elevated  at  a  slight 
angle,  tail  depressed,  wings  shut  close, 
the  whole  figure  motionless.  Suddenly  he 
falls  like  a  thought,  a  sky-blue  film  marking 
the  line  of  descent  to  where  he  strikes.  He 
pierces  the  pool  like  an  arrow,  disappearing 
for  a  second  in  the  centre  of  a  great  whirling, 
leaping  bubbling  dimple  of  the  water,  with  a 
musical  plunge-note  once  heard  never  forgot- 


CERYLE  ALCYON.  43 

ten.  Barely  does  he  miss  his  aim.  If  your 
eyes  are  quick  you  will  see  the  hapless  ' '  silver 
side  "  feebly  wriggling  in  the  grip  of  that 
powerful  bill  as  Ceryle  Alcyon  emerges  from 
the  dancing  waves  and  resumes  his  perch, 
happier,  but  none  the  wetter,  on  account  of 
the  bath.  Now  the  wonder  of  this  vision-feat 
is  not  in  seeing  the  minnow  from  the  perch, 
but  in  continuing  to  see  it  during  that  arrow- 
like  descent  into  the  water ;  or,  if  you  choose 
to  refer  the  success  of  the  stroke  to  accuracy 
of  flight,  then  try  to  understand  what 
amazing  accuracy  it  is !  .For,  in  that  case, 
Alcyon  must  take  into  exact  account  the  dif- 
ference between  the  apparent  and  the  true 
position  of  an  object  in  the  water  as  viewed 
at  an  angle  from  without. 

The  negroes  of  North  Georgia  liad  caught 
from  the  Cherokee  Indians  the  art  of  making 
the  blow-gun,  and  I  found  one  old  slave  who 
firmly  believed  that  a  blow-gun  arrow,  pointed 
with  the  lower  mandible  of  the  kingfisher, 
was  the  only  one  with  which  the  bird  could 
be  killed.  This  fanciful  conceit  may  be  added 
to  the  long  catalogue  of  superstitions  which 
cling  to  the  history  of  Alcyon.  My  archer 
companion  of  the  Salliquoy  had  the  upper 
band  of  his  quiver  decorated  with  a  king- 
fisher's head,  to  signify  that  his  arrows 
would  fly  straight  to  the  living  target.  And 
the  badge  was  not  an  idle  boast,  for  he  stood 
in  my  canoe  and  killed  a  green  heron,  stop- 
ping it  in  mid  flight  with  a  pewter-headed 
shaft  from  a  mulberry  bow. 

Ceryle  Alcyon  digs  its  own  burrow,  which 
it  may  be  said  to  do  on  the  wing,  so  rapid  are 
the  motions  connected  with  the  performance. 
The  beginning  of  the  excavation  is  made  with 
the  bill,  while  the  bird  balances  on  its  wings 


44  SYLVAN  SECRETS. 

close  to  the  face  of  the  ?lay  bluff  into  which 
it  means  to  project  its  adit.  There  is  a  fine 
suggestion  of  blended  royalty  and  democratic 
self-dependence  in  the  apparition  of  this 
splendid  creature  turning  itself  into  a  richly 
jeweled  tunnelling-machine  or  drifting  appa- 
ratus, hurling  itself  beak  foremost  into  the 
earth. 

Day  by  day  the  digging  goes  on,  the  male 
and  female  both  laboring,  I  am  led  to  believe, 
until  the  mine  is  completed,  a  mine,  by  the 
way,  admirably  constructed  for  self -drainage, 
but  scarcely  ventilated  at  all ;  a  grimy,  dark, 
filthy  den  at  best,  and  often  unspeakably 
loathsome.  No  wonder  Alcyon  laughs  as 
soon  as  he  emerges  from  such  a  cavern  into 
the  sweet  light  and  air  of  a  May  morning ! 
No  wonder,  either,  that  the  laugh  has  in  it  a 
strong  touch  of  reptilian  indifference  to  vocal 
harmony!  Here  is  the  best  instance,  speak- 
ing without  any  reference  to  comparative  an- 
atomy, of  a  bird  still  attached  to  the  lower 
life  of  its  archetype,  the  life  of  a  burrowing, 
grovelling,  repellant  amphibian,  but  enjoying 
also,  to  the  full,  the  broad  liberty,  the  sweet 
luxury,  the  inexpressible  delight  of  avian 
pursuits  by  flood  and  field. 

What  would  our  noisy  mill-streams  and 
bass-rivulets  be  without  Ceryle  Alcyonl  As 
for  me,  I  should  find  a  prime  aesthetic  value 
gone  from  angling,  were  the  kingfisher  with- 
drawn from  brookside  nature.  His  laugh 
may  come  in  now  and  then  just  in  time  to 
taunt  one  over  a  piscatorial  disaster,  and 
hence  be  very  ire-provoking,  but,  as  a  rule,  I 
have  found  it  a  rather  refreshing  giggle  of 
delight  over  the  landing  of  an  unusually 
game  fish. 

"Pid-d-d  d-d-d!"    sang  out  Ceryle  Alcyon 


CEEYLE  ALCYON.  45 

one  morning  on  the  Salliquoy,  just  as  the  ar- 
cher saw  a  three-pound  bass  he  was  playing 
leap  out  of  the  water  and  shake  itself  free  of 
the  hook.  ' '  Pid-d-d-d-d-d ! "  It  was  the  most 
inopportune  jeer  imaginable  to  the  ear  of  the 
baffled  angler.  Down  went  the  rod  along 
with  some  classical  allusion  to  hades,  and  up 
came  the  bow  and  arrow  from  the  bottom  of 
the  pirogue.  The  archer  had  a  most  becom- 
ing phrensy  in  his  visage  as  he  poised  him- 
self and  drew  the  arrow  almost  into  the  bow. 

Alcyon  sat  on  a  dogwood  branch,  amid  the 
clusters  of  great  white  flowers,  distant  sixty 
yards  from  the  bowman. 

There  was  a  tragic  pause  for  the  aim,  a 
knotting  of  the  muscles  on  the  straining 
arms,  then  the  recoil  of  the  bow,  the  low  sibi- 
lation  of  the  missile.  I  watched  with  atten- 
tive eyes,  throughout  the  flat  trafectory,  the 
flight  of  the  feathered  shaft. 

"Take  that,  you  snickering  idiot!"  ex- 
claimed the  irate  archer,  just  as  he  thought 
the  arrow  would  strike. 

4 'Pid-d-d-d-d-d!"  retorted  A Icyon,  taking 
to  wing  just  in  time  to  give  his  space  to  the 
shaft,  and  away  he  went  down  the  winding 
course  of  the  stream  until  he  was  lost  in  the 
gloom  and  sheen  of  distance.  A  spray  of 
dogwood  blooms,  severed  by  the  shot,  fell  up- 
on the  water,  and  then  the  "  tchick  "  of  the 
arrow-head,  striking  among  the  pebbles  of  a 
shallow  "riffle"  far  down  the  stream,  came 
back  like  an  echo  of  the  bird's  final  note,  to 
make  the  archer's  defeat  most  emphatic. 

The  semi-comical  grotesquerie  of  the  king- 
fisher's ways  is  exemplified  in  his  attitude 
while  suspending  himself  in  the  air  above  the 
water  by  a  peculiar  alar  motion,  when  his 
head  is  thrust  forward  and  downward  to  the 


46  SYLVAAf  SECRETS. 

full  extent  of  his  somewhat  constricted  neck, 
with  the  crest  erected  so  that  each  feather 
stands  to  itself,  and  the  short  tail  spread  like 
a  fan.  When,  after  a  season  of  rain,  the 
streams  are  not  clear,  Alcyon  hovers  in  this 
way  close  to  the  water's  surface,  and  plunges 
upon  his  prey  from  on  the  wing,  after  the 
manner  of  the  prairie  hawk. 

A  gentleman  in  Alabama  told  me  that 
while  trolling  with  a  float  and  silver  min- 
now in  one  of  the  bass-streams  of  the  Sand- 
mountain  region,  he  actually  hooked  and 
caught  a  kingfisher  which  struck  at  the  bait. 
The  incident,  though  unusual,  is  not  wonder- 
ful, and  might  happen  at  any  time  when  the 
troller  should  have  out  enough  line  to  relieve 
the  bird  of  fear. 

The  swallowing  capacity  of  Alcyon  is  enor- 
mous; he  makes  nothing  of  taking  down  a 
stout  minnow  of  three  inches  in  length,  an 
operation  nearly  always  followed  by  a  rasp- 
ing snicker  of  gustatory  delight  and  a  wrig- 
gle equally  expressive.  Upon  such  an  occa- 
sion he  looks  down  upon  the  stream  w^hich 
has  furnished  him  the  delicious  morsel  with 
a  glare  of  supercilious  ingratitude  in  his  half- 
fishy,  half-beautiful  eyes,  as  if  he  never 
should  ask  another  favor  or  want  another 
fish. 

Near  an  old  mill,  in  which  I  had  my  quar- 
ters for  a  bream-season,  two  kingfishers  had 
their  burrow,  the  entrance  being  just  above 
the  longitudinal  timbers  of  the  race-way.  I 
used  to  sit  on  the  cap  of  the  fore-bay  with  the 
big  water-wheel  jarring  and  groaning  under 
me,  and  cast  my  lure  into  the  stream  far  be- 
low. From  this  same  perch  I  could  watch 
and  study  the  busy  Alcyons  as  they  speared 
Hhs  minnows  an.d,  bore  them  into  the  burrow 


CEEYLE  ALCYON.  47 

to  their  young.  The  miller  told  me  that  for 
years  the  pair  had  nested  in  the  same  place, 
and  he  would  not  permit  me  to  explore  it. 
He  went  on  to  detail  a  number  of  reminis- 
cences in  which  the  birds  figured  picturesque- 
ly; one  I  remember  was  to  the  effect  that 
a  hawk  had  pursued  the  male  kingfisher  so 
savagely,  once  upon  a  time,  that  the  poor 
fugitive  had  rushed  into  the  mill  and  hidden 
itself  in  the  hollow  of  a  grain-shaft.  This 
love  of  the  miller  for  his  birds  struck  me  as 
beautifully  romantic,  especially  as  the  mill 
was  in  a  remote  mountain  "  pocket"  where 
any  thing  to  love  was  as  hard  to  find  as  were 
the  deer  in  the  pine  thickets  on  the  stony 
foot-hills,  and  considering  the  fact  that  he 
was  an  old  sinner  as  tough  in  his  fiber  as  the 
oaken  beams  of  his  race-way. 

The  kingfisher  has  inspired  the  genius  of 
poets,  legend-makers,  superstition -mongers, 
and  scientists  all  the  way  from  Ovid  down  to 
Mr.  R.  B.  Sharpe  of  our  own  day,  who  has 
published  a  brilliant  and  wonderful  mono- 
graph of  the  Alcedinidce,  with  many  excel- 
lent figures.  M.  Holland  in  his  "  Faune  Pap- 
ulaire  da  la  France  "  relates  a  legend  to  the 
effect  that  Alcyon,  in  leaving  the  ark,  flew 
straight  toward  the  setting  sun,  and  that  his 
back  caught  its  blue  from  the  sky  above,  and 
his  breast  was  scorched  by  the  luminary  be- 
low to  a  brownish,  clouded  hue.  Its  head  is 
worn  as  a  charm  by  savages  and  was  conspic- 
uous on  a  fetich  string  I  saw  in  the  possession 
of  a  negro  conjurer.  Its  dried  body  was  once 
thought  able  to  ward  off  lightning  and  to  in- 
dicate the  direction  of  the  wind.  But,  no 
matter  what  may  be  true  of  the  European 
and  other  foreign  kingfishers,  our  Ceryle 
Akyon  is  not  gifted  with  any  supra-aviqn 


48  SYLVAN  SECEETS. 

powers,  and  outside  of  his  dismal  den  is  a 
bonnie  blue  sprite  of  the  water-ways,  living 
a  bright  and  happy  life  forever,  perhaps ;  for 
I  never  have  found  a  sick,  a  decrepit,  or  a 
dead  one,  nor  have  I  ever  heard  of  any  body 
who  could  testify  that  any  of  our  wild  birds 
ever  die  of  true  disease  or  of  old  age. 

The  most  beautiful  kingfisher  superstition 
or  legend  I  ever  have  known  of  was  told  to 
me  by  an  old  negro  in  Georgia.  How  far  it 
extended  among  the  Southern  slaves  I  have 
no  means  of  knowing.  Here  it  is : 

"  When  you  is  a  leetle  boy,  not  mo'  'n  six 
year  old,  ef  yo'  go  to  de  ribber  an'  see  de 
minner  at  sunrise  fo'  de  kingfisher  do,  den 
yo'  neUber  die  'ceptin'  yo'  git  dro  wnded ;  an 
den  ef  yo'  does  git  drownded,  de  kingfisher 
tote  yo'  sperit  right  off  ter  hebben,  'ca'se  der's 
no  use  'r  talkiii'  'bout  habin'  any  bad  luck  ef 
yo'  got  de  eye  like  de  ole  kingfisher." 

I  say  the  superstition  is  very  beautiful,  but 
in  effect  it  is  the  same  old  story  of  the  heavy 
chances  against  the  seeker  after  lasting  hap- 
piness, for  how  much  harder  is  it  for  a  camel 
to  amble  through  the  eye  of  a  needle  than  for 
any  living  being  to  see  a  minnow,  in  the 
water  quicker  than  can  the  incomparable 
eyes  of  the  Ceryle  Alcyont 


SWAMP   SKETCHES. 

A  SOUTHERN  swamp  is  to  me  a  very  fasci- 
nating place,  a  genuine  land  of  dreams.  In 
a  realistic  sense  it  is  mere  mud,  water,  tus- 
socks, gloom,  tangled  vines,  and  dusky  tree- 
masses  ;  but  there  is  that  in  those  dim,  damp, 
luxuriant  jungles  which  appeals  to  all  that 
is  romantic  in  one's  nature.  It  was  my  fort- 
une once  to  pitch  my  tent  on  a  ridge  of  sand 
lying  between  the  waters  of  the  Gulf  of 
Mexico  and  the  mazes  of  a  swamp  whose 
almost  impenetrable  woods  and  brakes  stood 
like  a  black  wall  by  night  and  like  a  sheeny 
screen  by  day  set  against  a  sky  as  tender  as 
the  petals  of  a  hyacinth.  No  sign  of  human 
life  was  near,  not  even  a  fisherman's  hut. 

The  beach  of  my  sand  bar  was  the  most 
perfect  I  ever  saw — white,  hard,  and  gently 
sloping  out  to  sea,  where  the  greenish  waves 
ran  through  dreamy  sunshine  to  the  far 
white  line  of  the  horizon.  A  week  of  south- 
easterly winds  brought  up  from  the  Carib- 
bean islands  a  soft  fragrance  and  balm,  and 
kept  the  water  in  brisk  motion,  so  that  it 
lapped  the  sand  with  a  melodious  roar,  and 
so  that  a  dancing  zigzag  line  of  silvery  spray 
marked  the  surf  margin  as  far  as  one  could 
see. 

In  the  south-west  a  long  crescent  of  marsh 

ran  from  the  swamp  to  the  sand.     There  all 

manner  of  sea  birds  congregated  at  times 

with  a  shimmer    of  wings    and  a  clash  of 

4  49 


50  SYLVAN  SECRETS. 

voices  that  touched  the  imagination  strangely 
enough. 

My  boatmen,  both  of  whom  were  Creoles, 
so-called,  could  not  imagine  why  I  should 
have  taken  such  a  considerable  voyage 
merely  to  stay  a  few  days  on  a  sand-bank 
reading  books  under  a  tent-fly,  or  to  make 
journeys  into  a  dismal  and  lonely  swamp, 
neither  of  which  would  have  afforded  them 
any  pleasure  whatever.  They  evidently 
deemed  my  motives  obscure  and  mysterious, 
if  not  wholly  unchristian. 

I  chose  this  particular  place  more  by  acci- 
dent than  otherwise,  but  it  proved  to  be  the 
best  for  my  purposes  that  I  could  possibly 
have  found.  The  sand  ridge  ran  for  a  long 
way  back  into  the  swamp,  and  thus  gave  me 
a  safe  and  easy  road  to  the  heart  of  a  typical 
jungle. 

The  outer  fringe  of  the  swamp  growth  was 
si  line  of  marsh  grass  growing  about  waist- 
high  and  of  a  dusky  olive-green  in  color. 
Next  came  a  dense  growth  of  cane  with  scat- 
tering clusters  of  bay  trees,  then  a  hummock 
of  live-oaks,  beyond  which,  lonely,  gloomy, 
and  set  in  eternal  wastes  of  water  and  mud, 
stretched  the  moss-hung  cypress  forests  and 
magnolia  groves.  From  a  little  way  out  to 
sea  this  vast  jungle  had  the  appearance  of  a 
mass  of  low  hills  running  in  a  billowy  line 
against  the  sky. 

No  one  without  actual  experience  in  ex- 
ploring such  a  region  can  form  any  adequate 
idea  of  even  the  general  effect  of  its  features. 

Except  where  the  cypress  trees  grow  thin 
in  basins  of  water  the  plants  of  all  kinds, 
from  immense  live  oaks  down  to  the  smallest 
aquatic  weeds,  are  packed  together  so  that 
one  can  scarcely  force  a  way  through  them. 


SWAMP  SKETCHES.  51 

And  yet  the  soil  is  not  at  all  rich,  even  on 
the  hummocks,  as  compared  with  the  soil 
of  our  Western  prairies.  It  is  by  night  that 
the  swamp  shows  itself  to  the  full  expression 
of  its  gloom,  its  solitude,  and  its  real  grand- 
eur. Leaving  the  boatmen  at  the  camp,  I 
spent  the  greater  part  of  a  night  in  the  very 
heart  of  the  jungle  simply  to  study  it. 

The  moon  did  not  rise  till  after  ten,  so  I 
had  two  hours  of  intense  darkness  during 
which  I  used  my  ears  instead  of  my  eyes. 

Silence  vast  and  profound  is  the  rule  in  the 
swamp,  but  the  exception  is  often  very  im- 
pressive, sometimes  startling.  As  an  in- 
stance of  this :  I  was  comfortably  seated  on 
a  log  between  two  cypress  trees,  about  five 
feet  above  the  ground,  waiting  for  the  moon 
to  rise.  There  was  no  light  to  relieve  the 
oppressive  blackness  save  a  faint  gleam  of 
sky  overhead  where  some  pale  stars  winked 
through  a  rift.  The  sea  breeze  could  not 
reach  me,  but  it  sighed  very  lightly  in  the 
topmost  feathery  tufts  of  the  trees.  The 
beach  was  so  far  away  that  only  a  faint, 
mellow  roar  came  from  its  swashing  surf. 

I  had  a  gun  across  my  knees,  and  so  felt 
no  actual  fear,  but  yet  there  was  an  unpleas- 
ant sense  of  my  helplessness  in  the  presence 
of  darkness,  silence,  solitude,  and  the  spirit 
hovering  in  the  midst  of  them.  It  was  as  if 
a  hand  were  about  to  be  laid  upon  me  from 
behind,  or  as  if  a  great  mesh  of  destruction 
were  upon  the  point  of  closing  around  me  in 
the  darkness.  A  damp  chill  hung  in  the 
still  atmosphere,  accompanied  by  a  peculiar 
musty  odor,  comparable  to  nothing  else,  ex- 
cept, perhaps,  the  noisome  wafts  from  old 
tombs  and  caves. 

Jo  the  midst  of  alj  this  an  owl  hooted  not 


52  SYLVAN  SECRETS. 

far  off,  and  the  cry  was  so  emphasized  and 
exaggerated  by  contrast  with  the  environment 
that  its  effect  was  indescribable.  At  first  I 
did  not  recognize  it  as  an  owl's  voice,  but 
referred  it  to  some  wild  beast,— a  panther, 
perhaps, — and  put  myself  on  the  defensive. 
During  the  years  that  I  was  a  soldier  I  was 
never  half  so  frightened  in  fight  as  I  was  by 
that  sound.  Of  course  I  pulled  myself  to- 
gether in  a  moment,  but  the  sudden  impres- 
sion was  one  never  to  be  forgotten ;  a  pang 
of  awful  terror  whisked  through  me  like  an 
electric  shock. 

I  suppose  that  every  one  who  has  sat  all 
alone  in  a  forest  by  night  has  felt  the  pecul- 
iar impression  as  of  a  dusky  presence  draw- 
ing stealthily  closer  and  closer  to  him.  It  is 
imaginary,  but  no  real  thing  could  be  more 
clearly  outlined  to  one's  inner  sense.  For  a 
while  after  the  owl's  hideous  notes  had  died 
away  in  diminuendo  echoes  throughout  the 
forest  caverns  this  breathless  black  spectre  of 
the  night  oppressed  me,  but  I  finally  shook  it 
off. 

The  next  sound  that  I  heard  was  that  of  a 
body,  perhaps  a  raccoon,  passing  down  a 
tree-trunk  near  by  with  a  scratching  and 
scrambling  that  was  a  relief  to  my  nerves, 
for  it  was  familiar  and  realistic.  At  length 
the  little  animal  reached  the  ground  and 
made  its  way  to  a  puddle  of  water,  where  it 
played  for  some  time.  Then  something 
frightened  it,— it  may  have  become  suddenly 
aware  of  my  presence,— and  it  scampered  far 
away  through  the  woods.  Somehow  its  pre- 
cipitate flight  affected  me  strangely,  and  I 
half  imagined  that  some  hideous  being  of  the 
darkness  had  approached  from  the  depth  of 
the  jungle  and  frightened  it  away.  I  listened 


SWAMP  SKETCHES.  53 

with  suspended  breath,  but  not  a  sound  came 
to  my  ears.  There  must  have  followed 
nearly  an  hour  of  utter  silence,  such  as  no 
inexperienced  person  can  possibly  imagine,  a 
silence  felt  as  a  positive  element  far  exceed- 
ing in  impressiveness  the  mere  absence  of  all 
sounds. 

No  doubt  my  self -consciousness,  as  I  sat 
there  systematically  observing  every  sensa- 
tion and  every  fancy  generated  by  the  sur- 
roundings, helped  to  heighten  the  influence 
of  the  situation.  Moreover,  there  was  an  at- 
mospheric oppressiveness  owing  to  the  dense- 
ness  of  the  jungle  and  the  lack  of  free  ven- 
tilation. 

It  was  with  a  sense  of  relief  that  I  noted 
the  first  gleam  that  foretold  the  coming  of  the 
moon ;  but  instead  of  softening  the  effect  the 
slowly-increasing  light  added  a  myriad  gro- 
tesque features  to  the  landscape  around  me. 

I  could  understand  now  how  the  early 
Spanish  and  French  explorers  of  these  South- 
ern regions  came  to  tell  such  wonderful  sto- 
ries of  old  castles  in  Florida,  and  of  ruined 
cities  in  the  midst  of  almost  impenetrable 
swamps;  for  when  the  moonshine  became 
strong  enough  to  guide  me  I  wandered  from 
place  to  place,  fastening  in  my  memory  the 
scenes  as  they  appeared,  and  the  commonest 
form  of  the  cypress  and  live  oak  clumps  seen 
beyond  any  opening,  especially  over  water, 
were  those  of  ruined  villas  and  castles,  old 
moats,  and  crumbling  battlements. 

The  frogs  and  alligators  began  a  desultory 
grunting  and  booming  as  the  moon  came  up, 
but  these  sounds  died  out  soon,  giving  way, 
apparently,  to  the  wild  hilarity  of  a  great 
laughing  owl,  whose  voice  was  equal  to  a 
medium  steam  whistle  in  its  shrillness  and 


54  SYLVAN  SECRETS. 

compass.  It  was  answered  by  another,  far 
away,  ringing  vaguely  and  faintly,  like  an 
echo  lost  in  the  interminable  jungle. 

As  the  moonlight  grew  I  made  my  way 
from  place  to  place,  noting  the  wonderful 
changes  that  came  over  the  landscape  with 
each  turn.  The  trees  seemed  to  grow  taller 
and  taller,  the  shadows  blacker  and  blacker 
in  contrast  with  the  slanting  streams  of  pale, 
yellowish  light  falling  through  the  rifts. 
The  tangles  of  vines  and  the  dense  masses  of 
bay  and  haw  trees  often  forced  me  to  make 
wide  detours.  I  crawled  over  great  heaps  of 
fallen  logs,  branches,  and  tree  tops,  and 
through  nets  of  green-briar,  till  at  length  I 
came  to  the  shore  of  a  lakelet,  which  instantly 
brought  into  my  mind  Poe's 

Dark  turn  of  Auber 
In  the  ghoul-haunted  woodland  of  Weir. 

It  was  a  still,  dark,  sullen  sheet  of  water 
framed  in  a  fantastically  grotesque  border  of 
jungle,  upon  which  the  moonlight  was  falling 
with  ghostly  effect. 

I  was  tired,  almost  overcome,  indeed,  with 
the  exertion  ot  my  ramble,  and  was  glad  to 
perch  myself  on  a  huge  cypress  knee  with 
my  heavy  rubber  boots  dangling  and  drip- 
ping. I  had  come  to  study  the  swamp,  and 
nothing  was  to  prevent  me.  Mopping  my 
face  and  panting,  I  looked  out  over  the  only 
scene  I  ever  saw  that  would  wholly  excuse 
the  adjective  weird.  Imagine  slanting  shreds 
of  pallid  fog  hanging  like  giant  wisps  of  gos- 
samer from  the  water,  which  was  like  ink, 
to  the  tree-tops  which  were  like  charcoal 
masses  against  a  filmy  sky,  and  then  remem- 
ber the  awful  solitude,  the  desolation,  the 
stillness,  and  that  nameless  hovering  spirit 


SWAMP  SKETCHES.  56 

of  night  which  haunts  remote,  uninhabited 
regions.  No  phrasing  may  suggest  more 
than  a  shadow  of  such  a  scene,  Some  large 
white  birds,  snowy  herons  I  supposed, 
startled  by  my  approach,  had  risen  into  the 
air  out  of  a  patch  of  saw-grass  and  were  flap- 
ping aimlessly  hither  and  thither,  now  in  the 
light,  now  in  the  shadows,  as  silent  as  the 
brooding  silence  itself.  If  I  had  been  the 
only  man  in  the  world,  I  could  not  have  real- 
ized more  fully  the  meaning  of  the  word  soli- 
tude. I  knew  what  the  swamps  of  the  coal- 
age  of  geology  looked  like;  indeed  for  the 
time  I  was  back  in  the  days  when  the  groves 
of  lepidodendron  and  the  thickets  of  giant 
cane  were  slowly  sinking  into  the  ' '  carbon- 
iferous seas."  Below  me  were  vast  forests 
buried  in  the  mud  and  sand,  and  still  the  pro- 
cess was  going  on. 

I  have  often  mentioned  the  peculiar  effect 
of  the  plashing  sound  made  by  a  fish  leaping 
out  of  still  water  in  the  dead  of  night.  A 
large  bass,  at  least  I  thought  it  was  from  its 
motion,  sprang  up  in  the  midst  of  a  dreamy 
spot  of  moonlight  where  the  water  was  deep, 
and,  fairly  somer-saulting,  fell  with  a  plunge 
back  into  the  ripple  he  had  made. 

On  the  side  of  the  lake  over  against  where 
I  sat,  a  group  of  immense  cypress  knees 
looked  like  a  castle  with  towers  reduplicated 
in  the  water  underneath  them.  Farther 
away  fantastic  clouds  of  fog  bleached  by  the 
moonlight  drifted  against  a  black  wall,  like 
that  of  Babylon,  upon  which  stood  giant 
sentinels  with  spears  and  shields  and  gro- 
tesque helmets. 

Higher  climbed  the  moon,  a  wan,  lop-sided 
disk  of  silver,  and  the  scene  changed  slowly 
until  the  lake  was  shimmering  like  quick- 


56  SYLVAN  SECRETS. 

silver,  and  the  fog  had  arranged  itself  in 
beautiful  lace- work  patterns  falling  like  filmy 
curtains  before  the  dark  masses  of  the  jun- 
gle. Although  I  could  not  notice  any  air 
current,  this  beautiful  drapery  was  swung 
gently  so  that  it  undulated  and  was  folded 
upon  itself  in  the  most  delicate  ways  imagin- 
able. 

The  opposite  side  of  the  little  lake  now  ap- 
peared immeasurably  distant,  and  the  out- 
lines of  the  tree-masses  were  so  softened  that 
they  looked  like  vague  mountains  rising  out 
of  a  calm,  dreamy  sea,  or  like  those  floating 
scenes  in  a  mirage  on  our  Western  plains. 

Meantime  the  silence  and  the  solitude  had 
been  intensified,  so  to  say,  until  the  effect 
was  almost  unbearable. 

By  one  of  thpse  cerebral  tricks  for  which 
there  is  no  explanation,  the  impulse  came 
upon  me  to  break  all  that  infinite,  solemn 
silence  by  firing  my  gun.  No  sooner  thought 
than  acted.  Right  and  left,  boom,  boom,  I 
let  go  the  two  heavy  charges,  and  the  sounds 
seemed  to  shake  the  earth  and  jar  the  .firma- 
ment above.  They  leaped  a^way  into  the  re- 
motest distance  and  then  came  rattling  and 
tumbling  back  upon  my  ears  in  a  thou- 
sand echoes  of  every  kind. 

What  followed  was  quite  common  and  nat- 
ural, but  it  appalled  me  for  a  moment,  I  do 
not  know  why.  With  a  great  clash  of  wings 
an  enormous  raft  of  ducks  rushed  into  the 
air  out  of  the  water  at  the  edge  of  the  saw- 
grass  and  went  away  with  a  stormy  roar  into 
the  convolutions  of  the  fog. 

After  this  the  silence  fell  again,  deeper, 
broader,  more  oppressive  than  ever.  There 
was  something  awfully  threatening,  even 
menacing  in  it.  I  hurriedly  reloaded  my  gun, 


SWAMP  SKETCHES.  5? 

as  if  that  could  protect  me  from  such  an 
assailant.  I  remember  that  at  this  point  I 
thought  of  my  wanderings  on  Okechobee  and 
recalled  seeing  a  will-o-the-wisp  play  its 
pranks  on  a  marsh  of  the  Satilla. 

But  I  might  write  volumes  and  yet  not  de- 
scribe a  Southern  swamp.  From  the  nature 
of  things  explorers  of  these  awful  mazes  are 
few  and  timid.  I  have  said  nothing  of  the 
billions  upon  billions  of  musquitoes,  nothing 
of  the  malaria,  and  I  shall  not  because  I  was 
fortified  against  both,  and  they  did  not 
trouble  me.  I  came  out  of  the  jungle  im- 
pressed with  only  its  grandeur  of  effect,  and 
with  the  suggestions  its  strange  features  had 
engendered  in  my  imagination. 

No  sky  ever  looked  purer  or  sweeter,  no 
sea  brighter,  no  air  ever  filled  me  with  such 
a  sense  of  freshness.  Indeed  I  came  forth 
upon  my  white  sand-bar  as  one  might  come 
out  of  a  tomb  into  a  blooming  garden. 

The  boatmen  were  asleep  upon  a  heap  of 
grass  covered  with  a  sail,  and  the  little  smack 
was  tossing  at  anchor  not  more  than  a  stone's 
throw  out  from  the  surf  line.  Far  out  on 
the  horizon  a  ship  with  all  sails  set  was  bowl- 
ing along,  and  there  was  a  melody  in  my 
ears  like  the  low  singing  of  a  multitude  of 
voices.  I  lay  down  upon  the  sand  and 
slept. 


IN  THE  MATTER  OF  SHAKESPEARE. 

I  HAVE  sometimes  found  myself  indulging 
the  fancy  that  Shakespeare's  genius  has  been 
greatly  overrated — or  rather  overstated — 
even  by  the  most  cautious  critics  and  com- 
mentators ;  but  I  should  not  like  to  be  forced 
into  a  defence  of  the  fancy.  Monuments  are 
sacred  things,  and  few  men  will  deny  that 
the  Bible  and  the  body  of  Shakespeare's 
works  are,  to  English-speaking  people  at 
least,  the  most  venerated  of  all  monuments. 

How  could  any  man,  no  matter  how  self- 
confident,  go  cheerfully  about  the  attempt  to 
prove  that  Shakespeare  has  been  overrated 
as  a  genius  ?  In  the  first  place,  he  would 
have  to  be  a  most  extraordinary  genius  him- 
self, and  distinguished  as  such  in  the  world, 
before  he  could  command  even  respectful  at- 
tention as  an  iconoclast.  In  the  next  place, 
he  would  have  to  stem  the  tide  of  what  has 
come  to  be  hereditary  popular  opinion;  and 
he  would  have  to  bear  the  taunts,  jibes,  kicks, 
and  cuffs  of  all  the  Shakespeare- cranks  in  the 
whole  world — to  say  nothing  of  the  ire  of  all 
the  publishers  who  get  a  big  income  off  the 
old  poet's  books.  Lastly,  he  would  have  no 
way  of  proving  that  the  poorest  verse  in 
Shakespeare's  poorest  play  is  not  better  than 
the  strongest  that  Tennyson  or  Emerson  ever 
wrote. 

Most  of  us  are  slow  to  learn  that  a  Booth 
may  do  as  much  for  Shakespeare  as  the  great 
dramatist  can  do  for  a  Booth,  and  that  Mod- 
58 


SHAKESPEARE.  59 

jeska  may  put  into  Juliet  a  breath  of  life  not 
known  to  Shakespeare's  girl.  Genius  is  gen- 
ius, and  asserts  itself  as  superior,  in  its  own 
particular  way,  to  every  other  genius  in  the 
world.  Shakespeare  was  a  genius,  and  Victor 
Hugo  was  as  near  the  right  as  any  critic 
when  he  said  that  criticism  cannot  apply  to 
genius.  We  may  point  out  errors  of  meth- 
ods, of  judgment,  of  execution,  in  the  works 
of  a  genius,  but  that  part  of  those  works 
which  testifies  of  genius  is  always  beyond  our 
reach. 

In  Shakespeare's  works  this  unreachable 
and  therefore  unassailable  part  is  very  large, 
and  it  is  incomparably  many-sided  and  many- 
colored.  One  reads  Shakespeare  with  confi- 
dence, because  one  feels  no  lurking  insincerity 
between  his  lines ;  there  is  no  conscious  art, 
in  other  words,  padded  and  intercalated  in 
the  tissue  and  fibre  of  the  work;  no  posing 
and  attitudinizing  of  the  author  in  the  presence 
of  his  creations.  We  feel  sometimes  that  we 
have  been  duped  and  made  game  of,  but  we 
never  catch  the  trickster  wagging  his  thumbs 
and  puffing  his  cheeks  at  us.  Indeed  Shakes- 
peare was  the  first  humorist  who  did  not 
laugh  at  his  own  jokes,  and  he  so  far  remains 
the  last.  His  simplicity  sometimes  borders 
close  upon  mere  baldness  and  flatness,  but  his 
finish  never  suggests  (as  does  most  of  our  con- 
temporary work)  a  laundry  secret. 

I  should  adore  Shakespeare,  if  for  nothing 
else,  in  recognition  of  his  contempt  for  ana- 
lytical realism.  How  he  dashes  on  color,  and 
with  what  divine  steadfastness  he  sticks  to 
heroic  ideals,  even  when  he  appears  to  be  dal- 
lying with  infinitesimals !  You  never  find  him 
probing  and  picking  at  a  ganglion  of  motive 
to  trace  it  back  to  some  obscure  origin,  as  if 


60  SYLVAN  SECRETS. 

the  whole  of  life  depended  upon  the  absolute 
accuracy  to  be  attained  in  microscopic  analy- 
sis. His  characters  are  just  as  distinctly  in- 
dividual and  just  as  mysterious  as  real  flesh 
and  blood  men  and  women.  He,  himself,  too 
is  intensely  human,  weak  and  strong,  silly 
and  wise,  careful  and  careless,  neat  and  slip- 
shod,  clean  and  dirty,  but  he  is  never  mean 

or  vicious-  We  mav  find  a  g°0(i  deal  in 
Chaucer  which  is  so  obscene  that  we  doubt 
old  poet's  moral  grain  and  fibre,  but 
Shakespeare  does  not  revel  in  the  filth  he 
sometimes  handles.  There  is  a  severity,  an 
immovable  manner,  a  steadfastness  of  coun- 
tenance, so  to  say,  attending  him  in  his  deal- 
ings with  the  unclean,  as  if  he  felt  no  touch  of 
any  sentiment  whatever  in  the  matter. 

Your  modern  artist,  if  he  dared  speak  his 
feeling,  would  say  that  Shakespeare  was  not 
an  artist.  Well,  he  was  not;  he  was  some- 
thing better ;  he  was  a  genius  whose  power 
needed  none  of  the  factitious  aids  character- 
istic of  modern  literary  and  graphic  art.  He 
had  a  superb  imagination  and  an  infinitely 
flexible  style  of  expression  without  any  tech- 
nical expertness  or  smartness  whatever. 
Prettiness  and  exquisite  finish  of  surface  he 
never  thought  of.  Even  his  sonnets  have 
something  of  the  swing  and  freedom  of  a 
young  god's  movement.  I  confess  that  I  do 
not  have  any  idea  of  what  they  mean,  but  I 
feel  their  value  as  I  feel  the  value  of  the  sky 
and  the  clouds — they  are  fire  and  smoke — pas- 
sion and  dimness.  If  we  compare  Shakes- 
peare with  some  great  writer  of  the  present 
day,  Victor  Hugo,  say,  the  first  strong  line 
of  contrast  is  the  self-consciousness  of  the  lat- 
ter. We  cannot  ignore  Hugo's  or  Goethe's  ob- 
vious attitudinizing  in  front  of  their  subjects.. 


SHAKESPEARE.  61 

Even  Tennyson  uses  the  egotistic  pronoun 
with  an  emphasis  not  to  be  misunderstood. 

Shakespeare  was  lucky  in  many  ways,  as 
genius  always  is,  and  he  has  had  better  ,luck 
since  he  died  than  he  had  while  living :  an- 
other franchise  of  the  children  of  glory.  As 
the  years  have  rolled  by  publishers  have  in- 
creased, and  what  publisher  ever  died  with- 
out issuing  his  special  edition  of  Shakespeare? 
As  the  leaves  of  the  forests  have  authors  in- 
creased ;  what  scribbler  ever  goes  hungry  to 
his  grave  without  having  written  his  essay 
on  the  Bard  of  Avon  ?  Headers  have  become 
as  countless  as  the  sands  of  the  sea,  and  all 
have  read  or  are  just  going  to  read  Hamlet 
and  the  rest.  We  are  born  with  an  heredi 
tary  Shakespeare  bias,  and  we  go  toward  his 
works  as  the  young  snapping-turtle  goes 
toward  water,  as  if  the  act  were  an  instinctive 
one. 

There  are  "men  who,  if  they  dared,  would 
burn  at  the  stake  any  human  being  who  in 
his  sincerity  should  admit  that  he  found  As 
You  Like  It  a  very  dull  affair.  Once  in  the 
hospitable  home  of  the  late  Paul  H.  Hayne  I 
said  that  I  did  not  regard  some  of  Shakes- 
peare's works  as  of  any  great  value,  when  lo ! 
the  gracious  and  kindly  Southern  poet  leaped 
to  his  feet  and  poured  forth  upon  my  devoted 
head  a  flood  of  eloquent  and  indignant  protest 
the  like  of  which  I  never  have  heard  else- 
where. Indeed,  one  does  not  dare  be  inde- 
pendent in  the  matter  of  discussing  the  old 
master.  Not  worship  Shakespeare !  one  might 
as  well  deny  the  attraction  of  gravitation,  or 
suggest  a  new  theory  of  politeness  which 
would  ignore  the  swallow-tailed  coat.  Some 
things  are  true  because  it  is  death  to  deny 
them.  Snobbery  is  kept  alive  and  fat  all  over 


62  SYLVAN  SECRETS. 

the  world  because  it  is  safer  to  be  a  snob  than 
to  be  a  sincere  and  independent  man.  The 
lords  and  kings  and  princes  have  said  that  a 
swallow-tailed  coat  is  just  the  thing,  and  even 
the  hotel  waiter  cannot  cheapen  it.  So  the 
Moguls  of  criticism  have  said :  "Shakespeare 
is  incomparable,"  and  how  shall  any  clod 
gainsay  it  ?  They  used  to  say  something 
pretty  about  Homer,  too,  but  Greek  is  no 
longer  fashionable.  It  proves  something,  how- 
ever, this  firm  hold  that  the  old  English  bard 
keeps  on  the  moulders  of  public  opinion.  It 
requires  extraordinary  genius  to  live  up  to 
the  standard  these  intolerant  worshippers 
have  set  for  their  god,  and  so  far  Shakespeare 
has  lost  little  ground,  if  we  may  judge  by  the 
increased  number  of  editions  he  is  subjected 
to  by  enthusiastic  editors  and  hopeful  pub- 
lishers every  year. 

This  matter  of  editing  Shakespeare,  as  it  is 
called,  has  a  broad  tinge  of  humor  as  I  view 
it.  All  this  hair-splitting  over  doubtful  read- 
ings is  ludicrous,  if  one  dared  say  so.  In  the 
old  bard's  own  manner  there  is  very  little  to 
set  an  example  of  carping  or  higgling  about  a 
word  or  the  turn  of  a  phrase.  He  put  things 
forth  with  a  direct  stroke  of  his  pen,  as  Turner 
after  him  did  with  the  brush,  giving  not  the 
slightest  heed  to  the  infinitesimals  about  which 
the  wise  little  commentators  pretend  to  know 
so  much.  A  Shakespearian  scholar  reminds 
me  always  of  an  expert  in  fossil  bryozoans— 
he  is  so  dry  and  narrow,  so  fretful  and  pig- 
headed when  he  finds  a  man  standing  before 
him  who  dares  to  have  a  soul  of  his  own  that 
he  would  like  to  unburden.  This  reading, 
that  edition,  the  other  commentary,  some- 
body's interpolation — what's  the  difference  so 
that  I  get  the  broad  wash  of  ibhought,  the  in- 


SHAKESPEARE.  63 

comparable  impressions — the  kaleidoscopic 
views  of  life  and  manners.  What  do  I  care 
whether  or  no  the  celebrated  Professor  Nose- 
mout  has  given  his  consent  to  the  edition  I 
am  reading  ?  Nee  te  senserem.  It  is  Shakes- 
peare I  care  for,  not  the  little  man  with  the 
eye-glasses  and  the  many  commentaries  and 
editions.  To  be  particularly  sincere,  I  would 
not  give  a  straw  to  be  able  to  read  the  great 
cipher  of  Donnelly.  Life  is  so  short  and  wis- 
dom is  so  broad. 

Still,  if  a  young  person  came  to  me  asking 
how  to  get  grounded  in  literary  wisdom  I 
should  say:  Go  study  Shakespeare,  as  you 
would  study  Nature,  not  as  a  specialist,  but 
in  a  liberal  and  free  way.  What  edition? 
Any  edition.  Whose  notes?  Nobody's.  Make 
your  own  notes,  insist  upon  your  own  inter- 
pretations, then  go  hear  some  good  reader 
like  Booth  or  Lawrence  Barrett  or  Mod  jeska ; 
but  at  last  cling  to  your  own  private  opinions. 
Of  course  these  opinions  will  be  modified 
and  specialized  as  you  grow,  but  you  must 
not  let  them  hybridize  and  lose  the  precious 
elements  of  your  own  originality,  least  of 
all  must  you  let  the  little  buzzing  insects, 
self-styled  commentators  and  editors,  fertilize 
the  fresh  flowers  of  your  mind.  The  pollen 
they  carry  is  nothing  but  shelf -dust  and  book- 
mould;  it  will  make  your  brain  like  an 
autumn  puff-ball.  Go  into  the  open  air  and 
read  your  open-type  copy  of  Shakespeare 
under  a  tree  wherein  the  birds  sing  and  the 
wind  rustles.  You  will  find  his  effects 
broad,  like  the  sky  and  the  sea;  narrow,  like 
the  brook;  tangled  and  fretted,  like  the 
vine-worried  groves ;  earthy  as  the  earth  it- 
self. As  plays,  all  these  works  were  made 
for  the  stage,  therefore  much  of  their  stuff,  is 


64  SYLVAN  SECRETS. 

mere  stuff  indeed,  but  these  people  are  peo- 
ple, these  heroes  are  heroes,  these  villains 
are  villains,  and  these  lovers  are  genuine  old- 
time  sweet-kissing  and  hard-fighting  ones  that 
it  does  one's  soul  good  to  read  about  once 
more,  after  some  dozens  of  modern  novels. 

Since  Scott  no  English  novelist  has  sug- 
gested a  comparison  with  the  great  drama- 
tist, unless  we  consider  Bulwer  at  his  very 
best.  Hugo  and  Goethe,  barring  their  miser- 
able egotism,  are  Shakespeare's  equals  (at 
some  points,  his  superiors) ;  but  they  lack  his 
equipoise,  his  constant  suggestion  of  a  reserve 
of  power.  Hugo  now  and  again  wallows  and 
flounders,  like  a  whale  in  shallow  water, 
Goethe  struts,  scowls,  smiles  and  laughs  in 
turn,  and  always  with  the  air  of  feeling  his 
own  superiority;  but  Shakespeare  is  stead- 
fast, liberal-faced,  never  surprised  by  his 
own  wit  and  never  in  need  of  extrinsic  aid. 

If  any  young  writer  of  to-day  could  master 
himself  so  as  to  be  as  self-possessed  as 
Shakespeare  was,  we  might  call  him  a  thor- 
ough-bred author.  Vulgar  fussiness  and 
anxiety  about  the  fit  of  one's  phases  is  what 
one  can  scarcely  avoid  in  this  day  of  clever 
stylists  and  smart  analysts ;  and  yet  this  was 
just  what  all  the  truly  great  authors  of  the 
past  really  did.  Read  Shakespeare's  plays 
and  note  how  like  the  heavy  blows  of  a  la- 
boring swain  are  the  most  telling  of  his  lines. 
Even  he  loses  when  he  turns  back  to  polish  a 
verse  or  remodel  a  phrase.  It  was  little 
Horace,  not  big  Homer,  who  set  such  high 
value  on  the  details  of  verse-making.  Then? 
are  a  great  many  little  Horaces  now,  but 
where  is  our  grand  Homer? 

The  study  of  large  models  cannot  fail  to 
give  some  feeling  of  breadth,  even  to  a  small 


SHAKESPEARE.  65 

mind ;  hence  the  reading  of  Shakespeare  is  of 
prime  importance  to  one  who  dreams  of  mak- 
ing literature  some  day.  Not  that  writing 
plays  like  Shakespeare's  ever  will  be  profit- 
able again;  the  good  will  come  in  what  is 
caught  of  Shakespeare's  contempt  of  leading- 
strings  and  of  his  love  of  the  ideal.  Original- 
ity in  his  [works  means  a  Shakespearian  use 
of  whatever  came  to  fris  hand.  He  employed 
no  tricks,  appealed  to  no  mock-foam  or  stage- 
thunder  to  strengthen  a  weak  passage.  Men 
quarrel  to-day  over  the  question  of  Hamlet's 
mental  condition;  but  Shakespeare  saw  no 
need  for  any  foot-note.  There  are  many 
very  weak  places  in  his  plays,  but  each  play 
makes  a  distinct  and  clear-cut  impression. 
It  is  this  impression  which  constitutes  true 
value  in  every  work  of  art.  No  mind  can  be 
unenlightened  which  is  full  of  the  spirit  ot 
Shakespeare's  works ;  but  one  may  ber#sme  a 
mere  book-louse  by  creeping  too  long  among 
the  words  and  phrases  of  them.  Note  well 
the  difference.  If  you  come  to  the  reading 
of  Shakespeare  with  the  cringing  soul  of  a 
snob  in  you,  the  reading  will  be  in  vain. 
Read  him,  just  as  you  would  read  Mark 
Twain,  with  a  feeling  of  democratic  indepen- 
dence. He  was  no  more  a  god  than  you  are 
a  god;  he  was  nothing  but  a  large-headed, 
open-eyed,  self-reliant  man  who  was  gifted 
with  a  talent  for  writing  good  plays.  He 
would  not  thank  you  for  saying  that  the 
poorest  of  his  sonnets  are  better  than  the 
best  of  Keats' :  for  he  would  know  that  you 
were  not  sincere.  Keats  wrote  one  or  two 
sonnets  that  are  incomparably  better  than 
any  of  Shakespeare's. 

I  say  this  without  blinking,  for  I  am  writ- 
ing in  a  pine  woods  on  the  shore  of  the  Mexi- 
5 


66  SYLVAN  SECRETS. 

can  Guli,  far  out  of  any  so-called  Shakespear 
ian  scholar's  reach.  Beside  me  lies  a  volume 
of  Alden's  Ideal  Edition  of  the  works  of  Wil- 
liam Shakespeare,  the  cheapest  and  clearest- 
typed  edition  I  have  yet  seen.  You  may 
read  it  as  you  walk;  I  have  read  it  as  I 
walked,  communing  with  the  Two  Gentlemen 
of  Verona  under  the  moaning  pines  and 
mossy  live-oaks,  while  the  lazy  wash  of  the 
Gulf  waves  and  the  lazy  touch  of  the  Gulf 
breeze  "filled  in  the  symphonies  between." 
Forgive  me,  but  once  in  a  while  a  mocking- 
bird makes  me  forget  that  there  ever  was 
a  Shakespeare.  Just  a  while  ago  I  flung 
down  the  Ideal  to  run  and  peep  at  a  shy 
songster  flitting  about  in  a  cedar  thicket.  I 
like  living  things,  and  in  spite  of  all  that  I 
can  do  a  live  titmouse  is  more  to  my  taste 
than  a  dead  poet.  There  are  some  wonderful 
fossils,  but  even  a  mammoth's  jaw  is  not  so 
interesting  as  a  warm,  buzzing,  flaming  hum- 
ming bird  bobbing  at  a  flower. 

A  vast  quantity  of  good  breath  has  been 
wasted  telling  over  and  over  and  over  the 
threadbare  romance  of  how  incomparable  are 
the  works  of  the  old  art-masters,  a  lie  which 
has  to  be  kept  warm  by  the  constant  friction 
of  telling.  The  romance  of  Shakespeare  is 
of  the  same  sort ;  but  the  truth  about  him  is 
wonderful  enough— the  truth  that  makes  him 
a  great  man,  like  Napoleon,  Newton,  Phidias, 
Homer,  Dante  and  Hugo— greater  in  some 
ways  than  any  of  these  and  not  half  as  great 
in  other  ways;  a  man  whose  glaring  faults 
stand  out  in  his  works,  and  whose  rare  gifts 
those  works  do  not  half  disclose— the  truth 
in  short,  that  he  was.  like  any  other  genius, 
a  curious  bundle  of  greatness  and  common- 
ness. 


SHAKESPEARE.  67 

VVhen  I  was  a  boy  they  made  me  wash  my 
face,  comb  my  hair  and  put  on  a  broad  white 
collar  before  they  would  let  me  go  to  the 
book-shelves  and  take  down  the  old  leather- 
backed,  heavy -ribbed  book  they  called  by  the 
sacred  name  of  Shakespeare.  In  those  days 
I  devoutly  believed  all  they  said  about  that 
man's  perfectness  and  universality  of  genius. 
Indeed  it  was  with  a  sense  of  profound  guilt 
that  one  day  I  discovered  a  doubt.  I  had 
been  reading  Tennyson  and  my  head  and  my 
heart  were  full  of  new  and  glorious  sounds, 
colors,  longings,  and  dreams.  I  know  to  the 
last  pang  how  a  Christian  must  feel  who  sud- 
denly lapses  into  infidelit^  for  did  I  not  fall 
from  the  grace  of  Shakespeare- worship  ?  It 
was  a  final  fall,  too,  for  I  never  have  got 
wholly  back  and  never  shall. 

Still  Shakespeare  stands  alone  (so  does 
Shelley)  and  he  stands  alone  in  the  highest 
realm  of  art.  Quantity  as  well  as  quality 
(when  the  quality  is  always  high)  goes  to 
prove  great  genius.  Many  men  have  done 
one  act  of  perfect  creation,  falling  back  to 
mere  mediocrity  afterward ;  but  it  is  only  the 
few  who  can  keep  up  the  ecstasy  of  the 
maker  for  many  years  together.  We  may 
count  these  on  our  fingers:  Homer,  Milton, 
Dante,  Shakespeare,  Goethe,  Scott,  and 
Hugo— the  list  would  be  short,  but  such  a  list! 
I  am  not  quite  sure  that  Emerson  ought  to  be 
left  out,  for  he  was  one  of  the  calm  and  lofty 
ones  who  build  for  all  time,  and  yet  he  sug- 
gested rather  than  created  the  best  of  his  ef- 
fects. All  these  great  men  impress  us  with 
the  peculiar  sereneness  of  their  bearing  under 
the  infinite  white  heat  of  poetic  ecstasy. 
Carlyle  fell  short  here  and  hence  cannot  be 
galled  great. 


68  SYLVAN  SECRETS. 

Naturalists  tell  us  about  highly  specialized 
animal  forms— those  that  have  departed  most 
from  the  prototype.  There  is  a  figure  here 
with  which  great  genius  like  Shakespeare's 
may  be  represented— the  old,  simple,  univer- 
sal human  mind.  Shakespeare  was  not  a 
specialized  man,  he  was  a  specimen  left  over 
from  the  ancient  virile  race  long  since  wor- 
shipped as  gods.  Walt  Whitman  consciously 
and  with  great  labor  has  tried  to  be  such  a 
specimen — he  has  tried  to  stand  for  mankind, 
but  his  great  assumption  of  virility  is  vox  et 
preterca  u.ihil  save  in  a  few  splendid  excep- 
tions. 

At  last  it  is  Shakespeare's  sincere  and  per- 
fect love  of  his  race,  his  brimming  humanity, 
his  commanding  simplicity,  his  courage,  his 
abounding  sympathy,  his  liberality,  that  will 
always  draw  men  to  him.  We  speak  of  per- 
sonal magnetism  when  we  mean  a  man's 
power  to  influence  his  fellows.  This  magnet- 
ism of  manhood  exhales  from  all  the  works 
of  genius,  and  especially  from  those  of  Shakes- 
peare. Walt  Whitman  asserts  for  himself  in 
rude  and  almost  brutal  phrasing  what  Shakes- 
peare never  claims,  but  always  has  to  over- 
flowing—the vigor  and  rugged  self -sufficiency 
of  the  primitive  man.  I  have  noticed  that  all 
grand  men  assert  themselves  with  irresistible 
force  but  always  without  noise  or  contortion 
or  bluster.  A  steadfast  eye.  a  calm  face,  a 
quiet  manner,  an  even  voice.  The  gods  turned 
men  to  stone  by  a  glance.  The  clouds  and 
storms  are  always  far  below  the  serene  blue 
sky  in  whose  depth  the  empyrean  fire  steadily 
burns. 

Coming  to  the  study  of  Shakespeare  with- 
out any  taint  of  literary  snobbery,  and  wholly 
free  from  mere  hero-worship  looking  upon 


SHAKESPEARE.  69 

him  as  quite  subject  to  criticism  and  quite 
vulnerable  to  it,  one  should  choose  an  edition 
without  notes.  A  glossary  is  well  enough ; 
but  one  rarely  uses  it.  The  gist  of  the  plays 
is  not  to  be  found  in  the  obsolete  words. 
Anybody  can  understand  Shakespeare,  pro- 
vided the  Shakespeare  scholars  are  forbidden 
admission  to  the  study  during  the  reading. 


THE  MOTIF  OF  BIRD-SONG. 

"  And  some  are  hearing,  eagerly,  the  wild, 
Thrilling  liquidity  of  dewy  piping."— KEATS. 

WHAT  may  be  called  the  romance  of  bird- 
song  has  been  the  common  property  of  poets 
and  enthusiastic  descriptive  writers  of  prose 
from  the  time  that  the  Cadmean  contagion  of 
letters  slipped  into  the  life  of  man.  Indeed, 
ever  since  the  old  Hebrew  lyrist  heard  the 
voice  of  the  turtle  in  his  land,  there  has  been 
a  human  echo  to  every  trill  and  warble  flung 
out  of  bush  and  bough  all  round  the  verna^ 
ojrele  of  the  sarth.  It  ias  been  well  said  by 
one  of  our  ablest  ornithologists,  Dr.  Doues, 
Jhat  man  and  bird  are  the  two  animals  that 
sing  and  enjoy  song.  This  love  of  sweet 
sounds  has  formed  between  these  widely  dif- 
ferent and  extremely  specialized  beings  a 
golden  cord  of  sympathy,  which  has  been 
kept  sweetly  vibrating  for  ages  with  inter- 
change of  melodious  mouthings. 

I  have  often  thought  that  it  would  be  a 
most  welcome  book,  if  some  competent  per- 
son should  construct  a  carefully  arranged 
anthology  of  the  bird-lyrics  worthy  of  note 
written  in  English  since  the  days  of  Chaucer ; 
or  better  still,  of  all  the  best  bird-songs  of 
every  language  from  the  beginning  of  time. 
Such  a  work  would  disclose  a  singular  and 
beautiful  phase  of  human  history— a  phase 
from  which  the  literary  student  might  gather 
rich  treasure,  and  out  of  which  the  scientist 
might  distil  the  essence  of  precious  truths. 
70 


MOTIF  OF  BIKD  SONG.  71 

Doubtless  there  is  a  cause,  deep  set  in  the 
mystery  of  life,  from  which  arises  in  accord- 
ance with  some  natural  law,  the  instinctive 
interchange  of  affection  between  man  and  the 
song-birds.  I  say  instinctive  because  I  am 
not  convinced  that  reason  has  anything  to  do 
with  the  matter.  A  man  may  be  an  ardent 
admirer  of  birds,  and  yet  be  an  enthusiastic 
sportsman— ready  to  kill  them  for  mere 
amusement,  in  which  he  is  as  irrational  as  is 
the  jay  that  would  pluck  out  the  eyes  of  him 
who  feeds  it  in  the  dead  of  winter,  provided 
it  chanced  to  imagine  the  eyes  to  be  as  lus- 
cious as  the  berries  of  the  brier. 

There  is  an  impulse— a  law— other  than  the 
instinctive  movement  toward  food  and  pro- 
tection, which  causes  the  song-bird  to  get 
close  to  man.  I  could  gather  many  facts  to- 
gether in  proof  of  this.  Indeed,  all  the  lower 
animals  are  capable  of  loving  man,  and  many 
of  them  have  often  and  voluntarily  sought  to 
show  such  affection. 

Mr.  Huxley,  in  accordance  with  the  infer- 
ence enforced  by  a  great  number  of  anatomi- 
cal facts,  has  grouped  the  birds  and  reptiles 
together  under  the  name  sauropsida;  and  it 
has  come  to  be  pretty  generally  admitted 
among  scientists  that,  whether  the  avian  race 
has  or  has  not  actually  descended  from  a 
reptilian  ancestor,  there  is  certainly  a  like- 
ness existing  which  justifies  the  inference  of 
such  an  origin,  especially  in  the  absence  of 
any  tenable  theory  to  the  contrary  based  on 
scientific  reasoning.  In  this  connection  it  is 
a  striking  fact  that  no  mammal,  of  its  own 
accord,  ever  has  sought  the  companionship  of 
man  as  freely  and  sincerely,  so  to  speak,  as 
many  of  the  birds  and  some  of  the  reptiles 
have.  I  have  seen  toads,  lizards,  and  even 


72  SYLVAN  SECRETS. 

snakes  exhibit  great  satisfaction  in  finding  a 
cosey  nook  for  themselves  in  human  habita- 
tions. I  once  had  a  toad  friend  who  fattened 
to  enormous  size  at  my  expense,  and  I  had 
ample  opportunity  to  note  the  growth  (quite 
apace  with  his  corporeal  expansion)  of  his  af- 
fection for  me.  He  sought  my  acquaintance 
and  cultivated  my  friendship  of  his  own  mo- 
tion, evidently  taking  it  for  granted  that  I 
could  not  fail  to  feel  highly  honored  by  his 
attentions.  Birds  have  made  their  love  for 
man  so  well  known  that  I  need  offer  no  in- 
stances. A  few  words  in  the  way  of  sugges- 
tion, however,  may  not  be  amiss,  with  a  view 
to  leading  up  to  a  consideration  of  the  origin  of 
the  song-impulse  in  birds.  Genuine  song,  or, 
rather,  music-making,  is  within  the  power  of 
comparatively  few  of  the  avian  family ;  but 
we  may  consider  such  birds  as  the  meadow- 
lark,  the  bluebird,  and  the  blue-jay,  that  can 
utter  a  bar  of  two  or  three  sweet  notes,  song- 
birds for  all  the  purposes  we  have  in  view, 
and  from  these  lowly  and  slightly  gifted  ones 
we  may  pass  up  along  the  line  to  such  musical 
prodigies  as  the  nightingale  and  the  mocking- 
bird. 

Pious  minds,  influenced  by  the  charm  of 
spring,  long  ago  came  to  the  conclusion  that 
song-birds  were  ecstatic  worshippers  of  Deity, 
and  that  all  their  pipings  were  conscious 
praise-offerings.  At  the  other  extreme,  the 
scientists  have  referred  bird-song  to  erotic 
impulses  when  in  the  spring  the  wild-bird's 
fancy 

"  Lightly  turns  to  thoughts  of  love." 

What  shall  we  say  of  the  caged  bird  that 
sings  in  a  broken  and  sketchy  way  the  whole 
year  round?  Does  captivity  engender  per- 


MOTIF  OF  B1UD  SONG.  73 

ennial  piety?  or  does  it  make  the  tender  pas- 
sion unquenchably  and  constantly  burn?    I 
have  heard    the  crested  titmouse    utter  its 
slight  song-sketch  in  mid-January  on  parallel 
40°  north  when  the  thermometer  indicated  a 
heavy  dip  below  zero.     On  the  other  hand,  I 
have  known  fine  male  mocking-birds  that  re- 
fused to  sing  for  two  weeks  together  in  the 
most  golden  period  of  a  southern  spring-time, 
when  the  felicity  of  the  mating  and  nesting 
experience  was  at  its  highest  height.     I  have 
watched  a  lonely  blue-jay,  a  mile  removed 
from  his  mate,  sit  on  a  bough  and,  with  a 
peculiar  rhythmic  motion  of  the  body,  give 
forth  a  low,  wheedling  strain  which  could  not 
be  heard  more  than  ten  or    twenty  yards 
away.      The  indigo-bird   has  a  very  sweet, 
twittering  song,  which  is  scarelyloud  enough 
Co  be  distinguished  two  rods  from  where  he 
sits,  and  yet  he  will  pour  it  forth  ecstatically 
in  the  midst  of  a  prairie,  with  none  of  his  spe- 
cies within  the  horizon.     I  have  heard  the 
meadow-lark    and  the    bluebird  pipe    their 
dreamy  scores  in  every  month  of  the  year, 
regardless  of  the  season  of  love.    The  cardinal 
grossbeak  does  not  wait  for  the  time 

"  Whan  that  Aprille  with  her  showres  swoote 
The  drought  of  March  hath  pierced  to  the  roote," 

in  order  to  begin  his  loud  and  cheery  fluting 
in  the  thickets,  but  will  act  as  if  December 
were 

"  as  pleasant  as  May." 

Still,  the  larger  fact  is  that  spring  is  the 
season  when  the  volume  of  bird-song  poured 
round  the  world  is  incomparably  stronger, 
fuller,  and  sweeter  than  at  any  other;  and 
that,  too,  is  the  season  of  mating  and  of  nest- 


?4  SYLVAN  SEC  BET 8. 

ing.  Our  finest  songsters,  notable  the  mock- 
ing-bird, the  cat-bird,  and  the  brown  thrush, 
rarely  "tune  their  throats  "  before  the  earliest 
wild-flowers  bloom.  I  have  noticed  that  on 
the  coast  of  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  the  first  song 
of  the  mocking-bird  is  a  pretty  safe  announce- 
ment of  the  blowing  of  the  pitcher-plant  and 
the  little  white  daisy  in  the  sandy  bogs  of  the 
pineries.  And  the  further  fact  that  these 
plants  and  the  mocking-bird's  voice  vary  in 
their  coming  between  extremes  reaching  from 
the  10th  of  February  to  the  15th  of  March, 
according  to  the  season,  is  significant  of  some 
fine  sympathetic  relationship  between  the 
vernal  impulse  and  that  of  the  bird's  song.  I 
was  of  the  opinion  until  quite  recently  that 
the  bird's  vocal  organs  underwent  a  change, 
just  before  the  mating  season,  which  specially 
fitted  them  for  melodious  utterances;  but 
many  dissections  have  proved  the  contrary. 
There  is  no  appreciable  organic  change  in  the 
syrinx,  larynx,  tongue,  or  mouth  of  the  mock- 
ing-bird, the  brown  thrush,  or  the  cat-bird,  in 
the  spring. 

Nearly  all  the  most  charming  of  the  singing- 
birds  prefer  the  early  morning  and  the  even- 
ing twilight  for  their  vocal  performances, 
though  some  of  them  sing  far  in  the  night. 
The  matin-song  of  our  American  robin  will 
convince  any  one  who  observes  closely  that 
the  witchery  of  the  dewy,  fragrant  day-dawn 
is  the  bird's  inspiration,  and  no  person  who 
has  heard  the  mocking-bird's  dreamy  night- 
lay  can  doubt  that  it  is  a  fine  expression  of 
the  nocturnal  influence.  The  Baltimore  ori- 
ole comes  to  our  Northern  States  in  May,  and 
he  comes  as  if  floating  down  the  tide  of  his 
own  rather  monotonously  sweet  song.  For  a 
time  he  sings  from  dawn  till  dark,  in  a  fitful, 


MOTIF  OF  J3IBD  SOtfG.  75 

wandering  way,  as  he  flits  about  all  alone. 
His  notes  have  an  absent-minded  ring,  as  if  in 
his  diligence  in  food-hunting  he  were  forget- 
ting to  put  expression  into  his  lay.     Indeed,  all 
our  birds  use  what  we  call  their  voices,  just 
as  we  use  ours,  for  the  purposes  of  expression 
generally,  and  I  am  convinced  that  bird-song 
proper,  though    oftenest  the    expression  of 
some  phase  of  the  tender  passion,  is  not  con- 
fined to  such  expression.      In  a  limited  way 
birds  have  their  lyric  and  their   dramatic 
moods,  their  serious  and  their  comic  songs, 
their  recitative  and  their  oratorical  methods. 
They  are  conscious  of  any  especial  superiority 
of  voice,  just  as  they  are  keenly  aware  of  any 
particular  brilliancy  of  colors  on  their  plum 
nge.     It  may  be  noticed,  in  passing,  that  here 
i.0;dii  the  birds  and  reptiles  agree  (many  of 
the  latter   giving   evidence  of    a  taste  for 
bright  colors),  while  below  man  no  other  ani- 
mals show  much  more  than  mere  curiosity  in 
this  regard.     A  parrot  having  gay  feathers  in 
its  wings  and  tail  will  display  them  to  please 
your  eye  in  return  for  the  favor  of  a  nut  or  a 
cracker,  without  ever  having  been  taught  to 
do  it.     It  is  conscious  of  the  fact  that  brilliant 
colors  are  acceptable  to  the  eye,  and  it  in- 
stinctively seeks  to  thank  you,  so  to  say,  by 
the  delicate  strut  which  uncovers  all  its  hid- 
den wealth  of  red,  yellow,  and  blue.     So  the 
sweetest  sounds  at  its  command  are  instinc- 
tively flung  out  by  the  song-bird  whenever  it 
feels  especially  happy.     The  migratory  song- 
birds, upon  their  spring  arrival,  are  (no  doubt) 
delighted  at  finding  themselves  once  more  in 
their  breeding  haunts,  and  immediately  they 
begin  to  give  free  vent  to  their  feelings  through 
their  melodious  throats.     It  would  be  interest- 
ing to  know  whether  or  not  they  do  the  same 


76  STL  VAN  SECRETS. 

at  the  extreme  southern  end  of  their  migra- 
tion. I  have  noted  that  along  the  gulf -coast 
of  Mississippi  and  Louisiana  the  non-resident 
mocking-birds,  when  they  first  come  in  from 
farther  south,  are  noisily  communicative  of 
their  ecstatic  pleasure.  For  a  few  days  they 
make  the  groves  ring  with  their  songs,  then 
pass  on  farther  north,  many  of  them  finally 
reaching  Tennessee,  some  going  over  the 
mountains  to  Kentucky,  and  a  few  touching 
with  a  light  spray  of  melody  the  southern- 
most knobs  of  Ohio  and  Indiana.  I  might 
easily  mass  a  large  sum  of  facts  going  to  show 
that  no  one  desire  or  instinctive  emotion  is 
the  sole  cause  of  bird-song.  That  the  tender 
passion  engenders  lyrical  fervor  and  makes  a 
feathered  troubadour  of  the  gay  sylvan  lover 
there  can  be  no  doubt,  but  love  is  not  always 
at  the  root  of  the  lay.  The  song-bird  is  a 
gourmand  of  the  most  pronounced  type,  and 
we  find  him  going  into  a  rapture  of  sweet 
sounds  over  a  feast  of  insects  or  fruit.  He 
enjoys  bright  colors,  too,  so  that  he  is  always 
hilarious  when  he  finds  himself  in  the  midst 
of  green  leaves  and  beautiful  bloom-sprays. 
A  haw-bush  or  wild  apple-tree  in  full  flower 
often  is  the  inspiration  of  the  brown  thrush 
and  the  cat-bird.  In  a  certain  way,  indeed, 
the  birds  are  true  poets,  singing  forth  the  in- 
fluence of  their  environments — just  as  Burns 
sang  his,  just  as  Millet  painted  his.  I  do  not 
mean  to  be  fanciful  in  this  regard.  Call  it  in- 
stinct, as  it  is,  and  say  that  birds  do  not 
reason,  which  is  true ;  but  add,  nevertheless, 
the  indisputable  fact  that  instinct  is  of  kin  to 
genius,  in  that  it  has  its  origin  (as  genius  has 
its)  in  the  simplest  and  purest  elements  of 
nature,  and  so  you  will  get  my  meaning. 
It  is  impossible  to  know,  with  any  degree 


MOTIF  OF  BIED  SONG.  77 

of  certainty,  how  clear  or  how  dim  may  bo 
the  bird's  conception  of  melody  or  of  beauty ; 
but  we  can  know  that  its  enjoyment  of  color 
and  sweet  sounds  is  most  intense.  The  wood- 
pecker, beating  his  unique  call  on  a  bit  of 
hard,  elastic  wood,  is  making  an  effort,  blind 
and  crude  enough,  but  still  an  effort,  to  ex- 
press a  musical  mood  vaguely  floating  in  his 
nature.  We  may  not  laugh  at  him,  so  long 
as  from  the  interior  of  Africa  explorers  bring 
forth  the  hideous  caricatures  of  musical  in- 
struments that  some  tribes  of  our  own  genus 
delight  themselves  withal.  Among  the  South- 
ern negroes  it  was  once  common  to  see  a 
dancer  going  through  an  intricate  terpsicho- 
rean  score  to  the  music  of  a  "pat,"  which 
was  a  rhythmical  hand-clapping  performed 
by  a  companion.  I  mention  this  in  connection 
with  the  suggestion  that  the  chief  difference 
between  the  highest  order  of  bird-music  and 
the  lowest  order  of  man-music  is  expressed 
by  the  word  rhythm.  There  is  no  such  an  el- 
ement as  the  rhythmic  beat  in  any  bird-song 
that  I  have  heard.  Modulation  and  fine 
shades  of  "color, "as  the  musical  critic  has 
it,  together  with  melodious  phrasing,  take  the 
place  of  rhythm.  The  meadow-lark,  in  its 
mellow  fluting,  comes  very  near  to  a  measure 
of  two  rhythmic  beats,  and  the  mourning 
dove  puts  a  throbbing  cadence  into  its  plaint ; 
but  the  accent  which  the  human  ear  demands 
is  wholly  wanting  in  each  case.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  mocking-bird,  the  cat-bird,  and  the 
brown  thrush  accentuate  their  songs,  but  not 
rhythmically;  indeed,  the  cat-bird's  utter- 
ance is  an  impetuous  stream  of  glittering  ac- 
cents, as  it  were— irregular,  tricksy,  flippant, 
and  yet  as  symmetrical,  in  a  certain  sense,  as 
the  bird  itself — and  the  mocking-bird's  song 


78  SYLVAN  SECRETS. 

is  like  a  flashing  stream  of  water  flowing  over 
stones  in  the  sunlight  and  flinging  ariose  bub- 
bles and  tinkling  spray  in  every  direction. 
I  have  watched  birds  at  their  singing  under 
many  and  widely  differing  circumstances, 
and  I  am  sure  that  they  express  joyous  antic- 
ipation, present  content  and  pleasant  recol- 
lection, each  as  the  mood  moves,  and  all  with 
equal  ease.  It  is  not  so  plain,  however,  that 
the  avian  nature  is  fitted  to  formulate  hate, 
or  .sorrow,  or  anger  in  song,  for  any  unpleas- 
ant mood  seems  to  take  expression  in  cries 
altogether  unmusical.  I  have  never  heard 
one  sweet  note  by  any  angry  or,  in  any  way, 
unhappy  bird.  The  avian  life  is  beset  with 
every  danger  except,  probably,  that  of  epi- 
demic disease,  and  yet  so  flexible  and  elastic 
is  it  that  the  moment  any  terrible  ordeal  is 
past  the  bird  is  quite  ready  for  a  new  and  en- 
ergetic effort  in  song-singing. 

It  may  not  be  out  of  the  way  to  say,  in  pa- 
rentheses, here,  that  the  practice  of  studying 
domesticated  or  semi-domesticated  birds,  with 
a  view  to  applying  the  results  to  forming  a 
theory  of  wild-bird  life,  is  by  no  means  a  safe 
one.  Domestication  deprives  birds  of  their 
proper  food,  and  tends  to  shorten  their  lives 
and  to  disintegrate  their  characters.  A  mock- 
ing-bird reared  in  captivity  is  very  interest- 
ing, and  it  may  sing  loudly  and  well,  but  it 
is  not  to  be  compared  with  the  free  wild-bird 
that  sings  in  a  Southern  grove,  with  its  mate 
demurely  hovering  near.  Domestication  in- 
duces departure  from  fixed  habit,  and  in  the 
highly  specialized  song-bird  fixed  habit  is  de- 
veloped to  almost  the  last  degree ;  in  fact,  is 
not  the  highest  type  of  bird  the  completest 
animal,  in  point  of  physical  equipoise  and  fit- 
for  indefinite  prolongation  of  individual 


MOTIF  OF  BIRD  SONG.  79 

life,  that  the  earth  holds,  man  not  excepted  ? 
I  do  not  undertake  to  answer  my  interroga- 
tory directly ;  but  to  me  it  is  significant  in 
this  connection  that  of  all  the  hundreds— nay, 
thousands — of  wild-birds  that  I  have  killed, 
and  have  seen  killed,  and  of  all  that  I  have 
dissected  for  one  purpose  or  other,  I  have 
never  found  one  that  was  diseased,  so  far  as 
I  could  discover,  save  from  wounds,  unless 
the  presence  of  intestinal  worms  in  a  perfectly 
strong  and  healthy  appearing  subject  may 
have  indicated  disease.  I  have  dissected  and 
minutely  examined  the  mouth,  throat,  larynx, 
syrinx,  and  lungs  of  a  great  number  of  song 
birds,  and  in  every  case  those  organs  have 
been  in  a  perfectly  normal  and  healthy  state, 
so  far  as  I  could  by  any  means  discover. 

Among  human  beings  a  fine  voice  is  the 
notable  exception  ;  among  male  mocking- 
birds in  a  wild  state  there  is  no  exception— 
they  all  sing,  and  so  nearly  equally  well  that 
it  requires  close  attention  to  discover  any  dif- 
ference. So  one  wild  bluebird's  piping  is 
practically  identical,  in  volume,  compass,  and 
timbre,  with  that  of  every  other  wild  male 
bluebird  in  the  world.  From  this  and  a  hun- 
dred kindred  facts,  it  is  safe  to  say  that  gene- 
ration and  the  constant  transmission  of  or- 
ganic power  and  equipoise  are  very  nearly 
perfect  with  birds  of  the  highest  order.  In- 
deed, in  song,  as  in  so  many  other  ways,  the 
bird  shows  the  operation  of  a  nearly  unerring 
heredity,  and  I  have  been  forced  to  conclude, 
from  all  that  I  have  been  able  to  note  in  the 
lives  and  habits  of  song-birds,  that  a  good 
part  of  bird-song  is  the  mechanical  response 
to  what  may  be  called  hereditary  memory. 
The  mocking-bird,  reared  in  captivity,  far 
from  the  haunts  of  its  ancestors,  will  repeat 


80  SYLVAN  SECItETS. 

the  cries  of  birds  it  has  never  seen  and  whose 
voices  it  has  never  heard.  I  have  heard  it  do 
this.  Not  only  the  power  to  mimic  is  heredi- 
tary, but  there,  lingering  in  the 'bird's  nature, 
is  the  memory,  so  to  call  it,  of  the  voices  it  is 
born  to  mimic — the  voices  its  ancestors  mim- 
icked ten  thousand  years  ago. 

It  has  been  the  fashion  for  men  of  science 
to  make  light  of  the  common  legend  of  the 
power  of  birds  and  other  animals  to  foretell 
rain  and  other  meteorological  phenomena; 
but  I  long  ago  learned  to  credit  it  in  a  large 
degree.  Birds  are  not  always  right  in  their 
predictions,  because  weather-threats  are  not 
always  carried  out.  The  yellow-billed  cuckoo 
is  more  vociferous  when  the  barometer  indi- 
cates rain,  but  often  the  barometer  fails 
to  fetch  the  shower.  The  tree-frog,  another 
sort  of  song-bird,  squeals  and  chirps  at  the 
first  indication  of  a  rain -atmosphere,  but  the 
rain  may  fail  to  come.  Birds  sing  with 'em- 
phasis after  a  shower,  as  if  they  felt  as  much 
refreshed  as  the  violets,  and  the  clover,  and 
the  maple-leaves,  and  no  doubt  they  do  thus 
express  some  sense  of  delight  in  their  revivi- 
fied surroundings,  just  as  they  have  sung  or 
cackled  in  pleasant  anticipation  of  the  same 
before  it  came. 

I  have  seen  a  mocking-bird  eat  the  best 
part  of  a  luscious  pear  or  apricot,  and  then 
leap  to  the  topmost  spray  of  the  tree  and  sing 
as  if  it  would  trill  itself  into  fragments  for 
very  joy  of  the  feast.  The  shrike  cannot 
sing,  but  after  impaling  a  grasshopper  on  a 
thorn  he  will  make  a  hideous  effort  to  be 
melodious  over  the  deed.  So  the  bluejay  will 
utter  its  softest  and  sweetest  "oodle-doo,  oo- 
dle-doo,"  as  soon  as  it  has  wiped  its  bill  clear 
of  the  blood-stain  received  in  murdering  a 


MOTIF  OF  BIRD  SONG.  81 

nest-full  of  young  sparrows.  Even  the  belted 
king-fisher  cackles  gleefully  every  time  he 
swallows  a  minnow,  as  the  barn-yard  hen 
does  when  she  has  laid  an  egg. 

Buffon,  in  his  charming  sketch  of  the 
mocking-bird,  written  over  a  hundred  years 
ago,  graphically  describes  its  dramatic  pow- 
ers and  the  feeling  it  exhibits  while  singing : 
' '  It  thrills  to  its  own  voice,  and  accompanies 
it  with  measured  movements  that  are  always 
suited  to  the  inexhaustible  variety  of  its 
phrases,  natural  and  acquired.  Its  usual 
prelude  is  to  lift  itself  at  first  little  by  little, 
its  wings  outspread,  then  to  fall,  head  down- 
ward, to  its  place  again;  and,  after  going 
through  this  bizarre  exercise  for  some  time, 
it  begins  its  time-keeping  movements,  or,  if 
you  please,  its  dance,  according  with  the 
different  parts  of  its  song.  If  it  utters  bright 
and  airy  warblings,  its  wings  at  the  same 
time  describe  a  multitude  of  circles  that  cross 
themselves  in  the  air ;  one  sees  it  thread  the 
ins  and  outs  of  a  tortuous  line,  through  which 
it  ceaselessly  ascends  and  descends.  If  its 
throat  flings  out  a  brilliant  and  sharply 
quavered  cadence,  it  accompanies  it  with 
wing-strokes  equally  lively  and  smart."  I 
suppose  that  Buffon  described  all  this  from 
hearsay,  but  it  is  quite  as  accurate  as  any- 
thing else  I  have  found  in  his  works.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  many  of  our  song-birds  are 
consummate  actors,  within  narrow  limits, 
and  have  a  command  of  gesture  that  any 
opera-star  might  well  covet.  The  compari- 
son between  the  mocking-bird  and  any  other 
oscine  species  must  be  cut  short,  however, 
when  it  comes  to  the  denouement — the  final 
outcome  of  the  song — for  it  is  here  that  our 
American  nightingale  is  incomparable.  In 
6 


82  SYLVAN  SECRETS. 

speaking  of  this,  Buff  on  says:  "When  it 
gives  full  freedom  to  its  voice  in  bursts 
wherein  the  sounds  are  at  first  full  and  bril- 
liant, then  softening  down  by  degrees,  and 
finally  dying  out  and  losing  themselves  alto- 
gether in  a  silence  as  charming  as  the  rarest 
melody,  then  it  is  that  one  sees  it  hover 
gently  above  its  perch,  slowly  slackening  the 
motion  of  its  wings,  and  resting  quiet  at  last, 
as  if  suspended  in  mid-air."  But  I  have  seen 
it  go  far  beyond  even  this  extraordinary  per- 
formance, and  slowly  fall  to  the  ground, 
panting,  and  apparently  exhausted  from  the 
effect  of  its  ecstatic  climax  of  exertion.  Dur- 
ing many  visits  to  the  coast  of  the  Gulf  of 
Mexico  in  the  spring,  I  have  availed  myself 
of  ample  opportunity  to  study  this  Shakes- 
peare of  the  birds,  and  I  have  concluded, 
from  what  I  think  sufficient  proof,  that  the 
mocking-bird  sings,  consciously  at  times, 
for  the  purpose  of  gaining  the  favor  of  man. 
One  thing  is  easily  noted :  Its  song,  sung  close 
to  human  habitations— in  the  vines  and  or- 
chards and  gardens  of  man's  planting — is  not 
the  same  song  it  sings  in  the  wild  depths  of 
the  Southern  woods.  I  was  so  struck  with 
this  that  I  put  it  to  the  test  in  every  way  I 
could,  and  I  got  so  familiar  with  the  differ- 
ence that,  while  wandering  in  the  lonely 
forests,  I  could  know  when  I  was  nearing  a 
settler's  clearing  or  a  negro's  cabin  by  the 
peculiar  notes  of  the  mocking-birds.  All 
along  the  charming  gulf-coast  from  Mobile  to 
Bay  St.  Louis,  or,  in  the  other  direction,  to  St. 
Mark's  and  Tallahassee,  there  is  not  a  cot,  no 
matter  how  lonely  or  lowly,  provided  it  has 
a  fig-tree,  that  there  is  not  a  pair  of  mocking- 
birds to  do  it  honor.  The  Scuppernong 
vineyards,  too,  are  the  concert-halls  of  this 


MOTIF  OF  BIRD  SONG.  83 

famous  singer.  Near  the  home  of  Mr.  Jeffer- 
son Davis,  and,  I  believe,  upon  the  estate  of 
the  ex-Confederate  chieftain,  I  sat  in  the 
shade  of  a  water-oak  and  heard  a  mocking- 
bird sing,  over  in  a  thrifty  vineyard,  the  rare 
dropping-song  of  which  naturalists  appear  to 
have  taken  no  notice.  It  was  a  balmy  day  in 
March;  the  sky,  the  gulf,  the  air  all  hazy 
and  shimmering,  the  whole  world  swimming 
in  a  purplish  mist  of  dreams,  and  I  felt  that 
the  song  was  the  expression  of  some  such 
sweet  passionate  longing  as  exhales  from 
Keats'  "Ode  to  a  Nightingale.1'  Under  the 
low-hanging  boughs,  and  over  the  level, 
daisy-sprinkled  ground,  I  gazed  upon  the 
sheeny  reach  of  water,  half  convinced  that  I 
was  looking  through 

"  Magic  casements,  opening  on  the  foam 
Of  perilous  seas,  in  faery  lands  forlorn," 

and  the  very  tones  of  the  bird's  voice  ac- 
corded with  the  feeling  in  which  the  day  was 
steeped. 

Genuine  bird-song  is  simply  the  highest 
form  of  avian  vocalization,  by  which  instinc- 
tively, if  not  premeditatedly,  the  bird  finds 
expression  of  pleasure.  The  absence  of  true 
rhythm  probably  is  significant  of  a  want  of 
power  to  appreciate  genuine  music,  the  bird's 
comprehension  compassing  no  more  than  the 
value  of  sweet  sounds  merely  as  such. 

As  to  the  origin  of  bird-song,  it  has  come, 
it  seems  to  me,  in  response  to  a  growth  of  the 
natural  desire  for  a  means  of  expression. 
Language  is  the  highest  mode  of  expression, 
and  bird-song  is  a  beautiful  and  witching, 
but  very  imperfect,  language.  Tn  this  con- 
nection it  is  a  striking  fact  that  all  the  most 
gifted  avian  singers  are  small.  The  nightin- 


84  SYLVAN  SECRETS. 

gale  and  the  mocking-bird  are  insignificant 
physically,  when  compared  with  the  ostrich, 
the  condor,  and  the  crane.  The  entire  skull 
of  the  mocking-bird  is  no  larger  than  the  end 
of  one's  thumb,  and  its  brain  will  weigh 
about  one-quarter  of  an  ounce.  No  great 
scope  of  intelligence  could  be  expected  in 
such  a  case;  but  we  must  admit  that,  in  a 
slender  way,  this  brain  is  amazingly  devel- 
oped and  balanced,  and  that,  compared  with 
man's,  it  is  proportionately  the  more  power- 
ful and  under  far  better  control.  If  a  quar- 
ter-ounce brain  can  shape  a  bird-voice  so  as 
to  captivate  the  imagination  of  man  through- 
out the  ages,  what  ought  a  brain  of  ninety- 
two  cubic  inches  do  with  an  equal  opportu- 
nity ?  Like  the  musician  of  old,  it  should  set 
the  very  trees  to  dancing. 


THE  GENESIS  OF  BIRD-SONG. 

BIRD-SONG  is  one  of  the  most  charming 
mysteries  in  nature;  it  has  no  counter- 
part in  art.  I  have  at  times  fancied  there 
was  some  analogy  between  it  and  the  art  of 
poetry,  but  there  is  none,  in  fact.  The  genesis 
of  poetry  is  intellectual  and  psychal;  the 
genesis  of  bird-song  is  purely  physical.  Even 
the  human  voice,  in  song,  oratory,  and  his- 
trionic declamation,  borrows  much  of  its  best 
value  from  the  character,  mental  and  psychal, 
of  the  individual  vocalizer. 

The  song  apparatus  of  the  bird  is,  perhaps, 
no  more  a  machine  than  that  of  the  man; 
but  the  controlling  force,  the  motor,  of  the 
former  is  mechanical,  whilst  that  of  the  latter 
is  intellectual  to  a  large  degree.  Of  course  I 
do  not  mean  to  say  that  birds  sing  involun- 
tarily or  without  emotion  of  a  certain  sort, 
nor  would  I  be  understood  as  representing 
the  song  organ  of  any  oscine  to  be  absolutely 
unadjustable,  which  would  be  contrary  to 
the  first  law  of  evolution, — the  natural  im- 
pulse of  progression  from  lower  to  higher 
expression.  It  would  seem  that  conscious 
effort  to  improve,  such  as  man  is  capable  of, 
works  both  evil  and  good  in  the  way  of  devel- 
oping the  vocal  organs,  whilst  the  uncon- 
scious practice  indulged  by  the  birds  never 
injures  the  voice,  and  if  it  improves  it,  the 
result  comes  about  by  the  slow  process  of 
hereditary  accumulation.  Thus,  no  doubt, 
the  wonderful  voice  power  of  our  song-birds 
85 


86  SYLVAN  SECRETS. 

is  the  result  of  a  long,   steady  evolutionary 
growth. 

The  theory  that  birds  have  descended  from 
a  remote  reptilian  ancestry  has  so  many  facts 
to  support  it  that,  until  some  convincing  dis- 
coveries in  paleontology  shall  be  made  to 
the  contrary  tending,  we  must  accept  it  as 
probably  true.  Unfortunately,  the  study  of 
comparative  anatomy  is  both  infinitely  com- 
plicated and  immeasurably  dry  to  the  lay- 
man, as  contradistinguished  from  the 
scientist,  wherefore  much  the  greater  num- 
ber of  even  cultured  people  will  probably  al 
ways  rest  in  ignorance  of  the  startling 
details  pertaining  to  evolution  in  nature. 
Few  of  us,  indeed,  have  the  time  and  the 
necessary  self-devotion,  even  if  the  scarce 
and  precious  material  furnished  by  nature 
were  always  at  hand,  to  make  the  investiga- 
tions necessary  to  a  high  knowledge  of  nat- 
ural science.  Large  museums  are  far  apart, 
scientific  books  are  expensive,  and  the  field  of 
each  science  is  as  wide  as  the  whole  range  of 
nature:  consequently,  none  but  the  favored — 
or  the  self -de  voted — few  can  afford  the  luxury 
of  following,  as  Darwin  and  Huxley  and 
Milne-Edwards  and  Owen  and  Marsh  have 
done,  the  flitting  spirit  which  beckons  us 
back  and  back,  over  the  silent,  desolate 
grave-yards  of  the  ages,  to  the  beginnings  of 
things.  Still,  we  may  all  catch  a  light  breath, 
so  to  speak,  of  the  air  from  the  oldest,  or 
rather  the  youngest,  period  of  organic  life. 
Any  one  of  us  may  choose  a  slight,  narrow, 
but  far-reaching  current  of  inquiry,  and  float 
down  it,  from  time  to  time,  until  at  last  the 
end  is  reached,  .away  back  in  the  chaos  upon 
which  moved  the  Spirit  of  Creation  at  the 
dawn  of  day. 


GENESIS  OF  BIRD  SONG.  g? 

Some  years  ago  I  was  tramping  and  sketch- 
ing in  the  beautiful  hilly  region  of  Western 
Florida.  During  the  spring-time,  especially, 
I  spent  a  great  deal  of  my  leisure  studying 
the  song  and  habits  of  the  mocking-bird.  One 
morning,  while  a  fine  moquer,  as  the  Creoles 
call  our  king  of  song-birds,  was  charming  me 
with  his  Wonderful  vocalization,  the  question 
arose  in  my  mind :  When  did  a  mocking-bird 
first  sing  ?  Of  course  the  inquiry  could  not 
be  answered ;  but  it  suggested  a  broad  field  of 
special  research.  Why  not  ask  of  Nature 
the  general  question,  When  did  birds  first 
sing  ?  or :  What  is  the  genesis  of  bird-song  ? 
I  lay  in  the  shade  of  a  wide-topped  live-oak 
and  brooded  over  the  fascinating  problem, 
while  a  sweet  breeze  from  the  Gulf  stirred 
the  sprays  overhead,  and  rippled  the  silvery 
bosom  of  a  little  lake  that  lapped  the  sand  at 
my  feet.  Gradually  enough  I  formulated  a 
plan  of  investigation  which  I  have  followed, 
as  far  as  my  ability  to  profit  by  my  own  dis- 
coveries and  those  of  others  has  permitted. 

At  first  thought  it  may  seem  trivial  to  pro- 
pose an  inquiry  into  the  origin  of  bird- song; 
but  a  little  reflection  upon  the  subject  will  be 
sufficient  to  enlist  the  interest  of  almost  any 
mind.  All  things  have  had  a  beginning,  and 
so  there  was  a  time  when  no  music  of 
"  swelling  throats "  filled  the  air  of  spring. 
Somewhere  the  first  cat-bird  sang  in  a  brier- 
tangle,  the  first  brown  thrush  flooded  a 
thicket  with  its  melody,  the  first  mocking- 
bird filled  the  day  and  night  with  incompar- 
able rhapsody ;  at  least  one  imagines  as  much ; 
and  then  the  Garden  of  Eden  appears  in  the 
distance,  some  six  or  seven  thousand  years 
away.  There  it  was  that  birds  and  bird-song 
had  their  beginning,  just  in  time  to  welcome 


88  SYLVAN  SECRETS. 

Adam   and   give  Eve   a   brilliant   wedding 
serenade. 

Now  I  believe  that,  when  they  are  read 
aright,  science  and  revelation,  so  far  as  they 
pertain  to  material  things,  are  mathemati- 
cally equivalent  to  each  other ;  they  coincide 
in  meaning,  if  not  in  form.  They  might  bo 
exactly  superposable,  were  science  reduced  to 
the  simplicity  of  revelation,  that  is  to  simple 
truth ;  but  unfortunately  we  cannot  begin  at 
the  beginning  or  go  to  the  end  of  science. 
Revelation  states  a  fact,  whilst  science  merely 
collects  evidence  tending  to  establish  a  fact. 
Revelation  emits  simple  truth ;  science  strives 
to  reach  this  same  elementary  verity  by  a 
process  of  reconstruction. 

The  inspired  record  declares  that  man  was 
given  dominion,  which  would  imply  that  the 
earth  and  all  things  upon  it  and  in  it  were 
made  for  his  benefit.  Science  may  profit  by 
this  view  of  creation,  and  take  the  serving  of 
man's  physical  and  mental  needs  as  the  end 
of  evolution.  In  other  words,  we  may  as- 
sume that  if  the  object  of  creation  was  to 
make  a  sphere  for  man's  dominion  while  in 
the  human  state,  then  all  the  lines  of  creature 
development  have  been  drawn  towards  a 
culmination,  have  been  led  to  their  highest 
point,  in  the  age  of  man's  creation ;  that  the 
Creator  perfected  the  animal,  mineral,  and 
vegetable  kingdoms  before  he  made  man. 
But  what  has  all  this  to  do  with  the  genesis 
of  bird -song  ?  you  will  ask.  Perhaps  much, 
perhaps  little.  Let  us  see. 

Without  resorting  to  the  language  of  tech- 
nical scientific  literature,  where  it  can  be 
avoided,  I  will  briefly  review  the  records  of 
geology  touching  the  origin  of  birds,  and  by 


GENESIS  OF  BIRD-SONG.  89 

this  means  we  may  get  a  clew  to  the  origin  of 
bird-song. 

The  first  traces  in  the  paleozoic  rocks  of 
anything  resembling  bird  life  are  well-defined 
footprints;  these,  however,  have  been  at- 
tributed to  certain  ancient  reptiles  having 
feet  approaching  those  of  some  aquatic  fowls 
in  form.  Next  come  organic  remains — frag- 
mentary skeletons,  for  the  most  part,  of 
strange  saurians  and  bat-like  flying  animals, 
having  membranous  wings  and  the  beak 
of  a  toothed  bird.  No  sign  of  a  feather  was 
observable,  however,  among  all  the  fossil 
records,  up  to  the  discovery  of  an  imperfect 
skeleton  and  partial  cast  of  a  strange  creature 
named  Archceopteryx,  half  bird,  half  reptile, 
in  the  lithographic  slate  of  Solenhofen, 
Bavaria.  A  transition  state  between  the  bat- 
like,  bird-billed  reptiles  above  noted  and  our 
present  ornithic  forms  could  not  be  better  ex- 
pressed than  by  Archseopteryx,  so  far  as 
anatomy  and  exterior  structural  points  are 
concerned.  This  initial  bird,  so  to  call  it,  ap- 
pears to  have  possessed  a  very  oddly  arranged 
suit  of  feathers,  consisting  of  retrices  (ar- 
ranged regularly  on  the  sides  of  a  very  long, 
twenty- jointed  tail)  and  wing-feathers,  its 
body  having  no  plumage,  probably,  or  at 
best  mere  rudimentary,  down-like  feathers. 
As  to  whether  this  rude  bird  had  a  voice,  it 
is  useless  to  inquire,  since  the  head  and  ster- 
num are  wanting ;  but  I  think  we  may  safely 
doubt  the  existence  of  more  than  the  ob- 
scurest development  of  vocal  organs  in  birds 
having  toothed  reptile  jaws  and  by-concave 
vertebrae,  as  in  the  case  of  some  of  the  Odon- 
tornithes,  so  ably  studied  and  arranged  by 
Professor  Marsh.  The  fish-eating  birds  of 
our  own  time  have  not  much  voice,  as  a  rule, 


90  SYLVAN  SECRETS. 

—a  guttural  squawk,  or  a  metallic  clanging 
scream,  being  the  extent  of  their  performance. 
Taking  the  skeleton  of  Hesperornis  regalis, 
as  restored  by  Marsh,  we  shall  see  at  once, 
considering  the  toothed  jaws  and  reptilian 
throat,  that  its  vocal  organs  were  probably 
far  inferior  to  those  of  existing  loons  and 
grebes,  if  it  had  a  voice  at  all. 

Eeturning  to  Archseopteryx,  we  shall  be- 
come more  and  more  convinced,  the  more  we 
study  its  remains  in  the  light  of  all  that  is 
known  of  comparative  anatomy,  that  it  was 
scarcely  more  ornithic  than  our  common  bat, 
as  regards  similarity  10  the  birds  of  to-day, 
notwithstanding  its  feathers.  Indeed,  it  had 
a  sort  of  bat  claw  at  the  end  of  the  wing,  and 
its  wing  feathers  and  retrices  were  a  very  lit- 
tle remove  from  the  leathery,  bat  vans  of  the 
flying  reptiles  in  so  far  as  efficiency  was  con- 
cerned ;  but  its  impression  in  the  rocks  regis- 
ters a  definite  effort  of  nature  in  the  direction 
of  evolving  a  true  bird.  Thenceforward  we 
may  look  for  feathered  forms  gradually 
growing  toward  the  high  type  of  to-day.  The 
reptile  prototype  has  somehow  exchanged  his 
scales  for  feathers ;  the  generation  of  the  true 
bird  has  begun  with  Archseopteryx.  A  long, 
dreary  blank  here  appears  in  the  record  of  the 
rocks,  after  which  we  find  the  toothed  birds 
of  Professor  Marsh,  probably  full-fledged, 
in  the  sense  of  being  coated  with  feathers.  It 
is  to  be  doubted  whether  any  of  these  were 
good  flyers, — some  of  them  certainly  could 
not  fly  at  all,— though  they  were  mostly  ex- 
cellent swimmers,  and  possibly  capable  of  liv- 
ing a  long  time  under  water,  if  not  really  am- 
phibious. What  Professor  Marsh  says  of  the 
anatomy  of  Archaeopteryx  may  be  applied 
generally  to  the  toothed  birds :  ' '  The  bones 


GENESIS  OF  BIRD-SONG.  91 

of  the  reptile  are  indeed  there,  but  they  have 
already  received  the  stamp  of  the  bird: 51  and 
I  may  add  that,  as  regards  Odontornithes 
collectively,  the  feathers  are  indeed  there, 
and  the  stamp  of  the  bird,  but  the  old  reptile 
character  is  still  present,  scarcely  more  than 
dominated  by  the  ornithic  features.  I  have 
said  that  it  may  be  doubted  whether  any  of 
the  Odontornithes  were  good  flyers.  By  good 
flyers  I  mean  not  merely  strong  flyers  (like 
the  teals) ,  nor  sailers  ( like  the  hawks  and 
buzzards),  but  flyers  whose  movements  in 
the  air  are  almost  instantaneous,  like  the 
highest  type  of  oscines,  say  the  mocking-bird, 
or  the  cardinal  grossbeak,  a  facility  of  flight 
absolutely  necessary  to  arboreal  life,  where 
so  many  thorns,  spikes,  branches,  twigs,  vines, 
and  sprays  have  to  be  suddenly  avoided  in 
the  midst  of  the  swiftest  motion.  Some  of  the 
toothed  birds  of  Marsh's  smaller  group  may 
have  been  as  good  flyers  as  our  gulls,  strong 
and  tireless ;  but  they  could  not  dodge  a  dozen 
twigs  in  a  second,  as  I  have  seen  a  sparrow 
do  in  full  flight. 

The  discovery  of  Palceospiza  bella,  a  well- 
preserved,  almost  complete  skeleton  of  a  spar- 
row-like bird  in  the  insectivorous  shale  of 
Colorado,  has  given  us  the  nearest  approach 
to  a  song-bird  yet  found  in  the  old  rocks ;  but 
the  bill  is  lacking.  Most  probably  Palaeospiza 
was  an  oscine,  in  the  ornithological  sense,  but 
I  think  we  may  well  doubt  whether  it  could 
sing,  in  the  true  meaning  of  the  word.  Its 
position  in  the  insect-bearing  shale  further 
favors  our  classing  it  as  insectivorous,  an- 
other characteristic  of  the  true  song-birds; 
but  this  would  not  give  it  a  song,  for  many 
of  the  existing  oscines  have  no  song  to  sing, 
chirp  and  pipe  and  squeak  as  they  may. 


92  SYLVAN  SECRETS. 

From  this  slight  sketch  of  what  the  old 
rocks  tell  about  birds,  we  see  that,  so  far  as 
fossil  remains  teach  anything,  they  teach  us 
that  the  oscine  form  was  the  last  to  appear  in 
the  succession  of  structural  changes  in  the 
bird's  general  physique.  This  is  as  far  as  we 
can  go  in  the  direction  of  mere  development 
of  form,  by  the  light  of  anatomy,  considering 
fossil  skeletons  merely  as  such. 

Let  us  turn  rw  and  take  a  quick  glance 
over  the  evident  :>f  voice  development  dis- 
coverable in  the  kinship  between  birds  and 
reptiles. 

Professor  Huxley,  in  one  of  the  most  ad- 
mirable of  his  great  contributions  to  scien- 
tific taxonomy,  has  classed  the  birds  and  the 
reptiles  together,  or  rather  grouped  them  un- 
der one  head,  as  constituting- a  primary  divi- 
sion of  the  vertebrates.  He  has  based  this 
classification  on  many  points  in  which,  on  one 
hand,  birds  and  reptiles  agree  anatomically 
and  physiologically,  and  on  their  variance 
from  mammals  in  as  many  points  on  the 
other  hand.  Indeed,  the  kinship  between 
birds  and  reptiles  is  still  very  strong,  even  af- 
ter the  immense  development  of  the  bird  form 
and  the  comparatively  slight  modification  of 
most  reptile  forms  which  have  come  about 
since  the  time  of  Archseopteryx  and  the  dino- 
saurian  animals  of  the  triassic  rocks. 

We  may  assume,  then,  that  the  develop- 
ment of  the  vocal  organs  in  birds  has  been,  in 
some  measure,  apace  with  or  dependent  upon 
the  departure  of  the  bird  form  from  that  of 
the  reptile. 

Our  present  existing  reptiles  are  almost  de- 
void of  voice  proper.  Some  of  them  can  make 
certain  dismal,  guttural  groans  or  croaks, 
others  can  utter  shrill,  discordant  sounds; 


GENESIS  OF  BIRD-SONG.  93 

but  at  best  the  reptilian  vocal  apparatus  is 
rudimentary  in  the  extreme.  Hence  in  those 
days  when  the  bird  was  just  struggling  away 
from  the  clumsiest  and  worst  hindering  char- 
acteristics of  the  reptile,  it  certainly  possessed 
no  vocal  organs  of  any  great  power.  It  would 
appear  doubtful  whether  it  had  any  at  all, 
since  so  few  birds,  even  now,  have  a  singing 
voice,  and  since,  after  all  these  ages  of  devel- 
opment, the  reptile's  voice  is  scarcely  a  voice 
at  best.  It  is  a  curious  fact  that  frogs  and 
toads,  amphibians,  have  the  best  developed  vo- 
cal organs  of  all  the  reptiles,  and  that  they  are 
not  properly  scale-bearing ;  and  yet  it  is  from 
the  scale-bearing  reptiles  that  our  birds  have 
sprung.  Perhaps  the  common  toad  comes 
nearer  than  any  known  reptile  to  the  posses- 
sion of  a  singing  voice,  though  the  tree-frogs 
have  a  peculiar  chirp  or  squeak  not  unlike 
certain  notes  of  the  woodpeckers.  One  might 
stop  here  and  indulge  the  pretty  impression 
that  the  toad  in  the  summer  grass  and  the 
tree-frog  among  the  green  branches  register 
the  highest  possibilities  of  reptilian  song 
genius,  whilst  the  mocking-bird,  the  brown 
thrush,  and  the  nightingale  assert  the  tri- 
umph of  the  race  which  long  ago  departed 
from  the  groove  of  that  lower  estate,  by 
changing  scales  to  feathers,  legs  to  wings,  and 
that  rudimentary  vocal  apparatus  into  the 
syrinx,  with  which  to  charm  the  poets  of  all 
time! 

The  crocodiles,  including  our  alligator,  have 
the  tongue  attached  all  round  in  the  mouth, 
so  that  it  cannot  be  much  used,  and  it  is  at 
this  point,  so  far  as  the  power  of  vocalization 
is  concerned,  that  song-birds  have  departed 
farthest  from  the  scale-bearing  reptiles;  for 
the  tongues  of  our  musical  oscines  are  thor- 


94  SYLVAN  SECEETS. 

oughly  liberated,  and  do  good  service  in  the 
complicated  gymnastics  of  song  production. 
The  tongue  of  the  frog  is,  as  a  rule,  attached 
at  the  front  of  the  mouth  and  free  behind,  so 
that,  in  catching  insects,  this  organ  is  "  curled 
over  itself,"  and  thrust  out  rear  end  foremost. 
Curiously  enough,  the  "  singing  "  tree-frogs 
are  the  males,  the  females  not  possessing  the 
vocal  power  to  any  great  degree ;  thus  resem- 
bling our  oscines,  whose  males  are  the  music- 
makers.  Moreover,  the  frog,  as  a  fossil,  dates 
back  to  the  time  when  the  birds  were  fairly 
beginning  to  separate  themselves  from  reptile 
life.  Add  to  this  the  fact  that  there  is  a  flying 
tree-frog  in  Borneo,  and  it  will  be  seen  that 
here  is  a  strange,  belated  effort  of  nature  to 
urge  the  scaleless  reptiles  up  to  arboreal, 
aerial,  and  song-singing  life,  by  the  side  of 
their  more  fortunate  avian  kinsmen,  who 
early  chose  a  better  method  of  develop- 
ment! 

Turning  now  to  rapidly  sketch  the  really 
wonderful  vocal  organs  of  our  oscine  birds, 
I  need  not  enter  into  any  technical  anatomi- 
cal discussion,  but,  taking  the  mocking-bird 
as  the  highest  type  of  singer,  it  will  be  suffi- 
cient, for  the  purposes  of  this  paper,  to  ex- 
plain the  salient  features  of  the  song-produc- 
ing throat  in  birds.  First,  then,  all  bird-song 
is  generated  in  a  lower  larynx  called  the 
syrinx,  a  complicated  little  machine  situated, 
in  fact,  at  the  lower  end  of  the  trachea, 
where  it  divides  into  two  bronchial  tubes, 
and  consisting  in  chief  of  an  enlargement  and 
rearrangement  of  the  compound  lower  ring 
of  the  windpipe,  a  bony  cross-bar,  orpessulus, 
and  a  membranous  plate  which  forms  a  par- 
tition between  the  tubes,  and  whose  upper 
margin  is  one  of  the  vibrating  vocal  cords, 


GENESIS  OF  BIBD-SONG.  95 

the  other  cord  being  a  membrane  developed 
on  the  inside  of  the  bronchial  rings,  or  rather 
half-rings,  opposite  the  septum  or  partition 
above  mentioned.  Thus  a  column  of  air 
passing  from  the  lungs  to  escape  through  the 
trachea  sets  these  membranes  to  vibrating, 
whilst  by  means  of  five  or  six  pairs  of  deli- 
cately adjusted  muscles  the  air  space  is 
changed  with  wonderful  facility,  the  column 
shortened  or  lengthened,  as  is  done  by  the 
flute-player,  and  indeed  the  whole  lower 
throat  becomes  a  generator  of  sweet  sounds, 
which,  passing  up  to  the  bird's  mouth,  are 
broken  into  melodious  bits,  so  to  speak,  and 
scattered  to  the  winds;  for  the  highest  vo- 
calization, although  generated  in  the  syrinx, 
is  made  into  song,  in  a  large  degree,  by  the 
bird's  tongue,  its  posterior  mouth  walls,  and 
the  upper  extremity  of  the  trachea,  all  of 
which  taken  together  constitute  a  compli- 
cated and  perfectly  adjusted  governor  of  the 
quantity,  the  accent,  and,  in  a  measure,  the 
quality  of  the  notes. 

Every  observer  has  remarked  that  nearly 
all  the  superior  songsters  among  birds  have 
rather  long  and  slender  bills,  whilst  the  talk- 
ers have  short,  stout  ones.  I  have  tried  to 
discover,  and  think  I  have  discovered,  the 
relation  that  width,  length,  and  curvature  of 
bill  have  to  the  quality  or  style  of  voice.  It 
is  sufficient  to  remark  here  that  birds  having 
extremely  short,  thick  .beaks,  like  that  of  the 
cardinal  grossbeak  or  that  of  the  blue-jay, 
have  not  the  power,  apparently,  of  trilling, 
shaking,  or  quavering  the  voice  (which  is  the 
distinguishing  gift  of  the  thrush  and  many 
other  slender-billed  birds),  though  the  gross- 
beak  and  the  jay  have  excellent  vocal  pow- 
ers. Eeduced  to  a  rule,  the  comparison  will 


96  SYLVAN  SECRETS. 

be,  The  short-bills  twitter  and  whistle,  the 
long-bills  sing.  The  blue-jay  is  the  most 
melodious  of  the  whistlers,  whilst  the  quail 
(bob-white)  and  the  cardinal  grossbeak  are 
the  most  powerful  whistlers  of  all  our  birds. 

It  has  been  somewhat  taken  for  granted  by 
our  ornithologists  that  all  the  birds  belong- 
ing to  the  subdivision  named  oscines,  or  sing- 
ers, have  the  vocal  organs  necessary  to  song. 
Even  Dr.  Coues  remarks  that  the  rook, 
though  "a  corvine  croaker,"  has  a  "syrinx 
in  good  order,  though  he  has  never  learned 
to  play  "  on  it .  Now,  I  have  never  had  the 
opportunity  of  dissecting  a  rook's  vocal  or- 
gans ;  but  I  am  able  to  say  that  such  corvine 
croakers  as  I  have  examined  are  not  pos- 
sessed of  a  song-making  apparatus  to  be  at 
all  compared  with  that  of  the  cat-bird,  the 
brown  thrush,  or  the  mocking-bird.  MacgiJ- 
livray's  figures  will  have  to  be  greatly  mod- 
ified when  applied  to  the  best  of  our  Ameri- 
can songsters.  Professor  Muller's  researches 
in  the  comparative  anatomy  of  vocal  organs 
in  birds,  and  Professor  Huxley's  admirably 
clear  description,  have  failed  fully  to  recog- 
nize the  office  of  the  tongue  and  posterior 
walls  of  the  mouth  in  differentiating  and 
modifying  the  notes  of  a  bird's  song.  It  ap- 
pears to  me  that  the  oversight,  or  partial 
oversight,  has  arisen  from  taking  it  for 
granted  that  the  bronchi- tracheal  syrinx  is 
the  absolute  and  sole  song  organ  in  birds,  in- 
stead of  being  merely  the  voice  generator  in 
song-birds.  For  example,  the  parrot  has  no 
septum  in  his  syrinx,  and  but  three  pairs  of 
intrinsic  muscles,  and  yet  his  voice  is  a  won- 
der of  flexibility  and  elasticity.  Melody  is 
lacking,  because  one  of  the  vocal  cords  (the 
septum  with  its  mnmbrn.no)  is  gone;  but  high 


GENESIS  OF  BIRD-SONG.  9? 

vocal  performance  is  possible,  because  the 
lower  mouth  space  and  the  tongue  are  singu- 
larly adapted  to  modifying  and  breaking  up 
the  voice  into  fragments  surprisingly  articu- 
late, though  the  voice  itself  is  inferior  in 
timbre  and  range. 

Long  before  I  began  my  dissections,  I  had 
noted  that  the  sweetest  of  the  flute  notes  ut- 
tered by  the  mocking-bird  and  the  blue- jay 
appeared  to  be  blown  out  through  a  rigidly 
distended  throat,  whilst  the  delicately  qua- 
vered passages  of  the  mocking-bird's  song 
were,  seemingly,  manufactured  at  the  root 
of  the  tongue.  To  get  evidence  of  this,  care- 
fully watch  your  caged  mocker  when  he  is 
delivering  a  labored  staccato  combination, 
and  you  will  see  the  convulsive  shake  of  the 
mouth  muscles  and  the  peculiar  management 
of  the  lower  mouth  space,  by  which  he  differ- 
entiates the  notes.  On  the  other  hand,  he 
will  whistle,  and  when  he  has  ended  you  can 
scarcely  say  whether  or  not  he  opened  or 
moved  his  mouth  at  all  during  the  perform- 
ance. 

•  There  is  an  interesting  ventriloquial  effect 
produced  by  the  purely  syringeal  or  laryn- 
geal  notes  of  a  bird's  voice.  This  is  very 
pronounced  in  the  call  of  the  quail,  and  es- 
pecially in  the  piping  of  young  wild  turkeys ; 
but  it  is  most  noteworthy  in  some  of  the 
night-cries  of  the  mocking-bird.  True  song, 
however,  has  nothing  of  this  peculiarity  in  it ; 
even  the  careless  shadow  lay  of  the  indigo- 
bird  has  its  definite  expression  of  place  and 
distance,  no  matter  how  sketchy  its  outline. 

From  all  we  can  gather  it  appears  most 
probable  that  in  its  present  form  our  song- 
bird proper— our  bird  with  a  song  to  sing— is 
not  much  older  than  man ;  that  he  found  his 


98  SYLVAN  SECRETS. 

song  just  in  time  to  gladden  the  ears  of  God's 
last  and  greatest  creation ;  that  he  struggled 
through  countless  ages  and  awful  changes  in 
order  to  fit  himself  for  our  entertainment. 
Think  what  the  avian  race  has  endured  since 
first  Archseopteryx  felt  the  feathers  begin  to 
bud  in  his  arms !  What  a  long,  slow,  hesitat- 
ing, faltering  current  of  development,  from  a 
scaly  amphibian  of  the  paleozoic  time,  up, 
up,  to  the  glorious  state  of  the  nightingale 
and  the  mocking-bird !  I  never  see  a  brown 
thrush  flashing  his  brilliant  song  from  the 
highest  spray  of  a  tree  without  letting  a 
thought  go  back  over  the  way  he  has  come 
to  us,  and  I  always  feel  that  to  protect  and 
defend  the  song-bird  is  one  of  man's  clearest 
duties.  Indeed,  nothing  is  better  indicated 
by  the  records  of  the  ages  than  that  beautiful 
colors,  rich  fragrance,  and  bird-song  were 
made  especially  for  us.  There  were  no 
flowers,  properly  so  called,  in  paleozoic 
times.  Amidst  all  the  luxuriant  vegetation 
of  fhe  coal  measures,  not  a  fossil  blossom  is 
found,  nor  do  the  rocks  give  up  a  single  but- 
terfly or  other  insect  which  was  probably 
highly  or  delicately  colored.  The  ancient 
birds  (reasoning  from  analogy)  were  not  gay- 
feathered,  and,  as  I  have  shown,  were  not 
able  to  sing.  But  when  man  appeared  the 
world  was  ready  for  him ;  the  hills  and  the 
valleys  and  the  broad  plains  were  covered 
with  verdure  and  bloom,  and  the  air  was  rich 
with  perfume  and  resonant  with  bird-song. 
He  might  have  looked  around  scarcely  able 
to  know  whether  the  butterflies  were  winged 
flowers,  or  the  flowers  vegetable  butterflies. 
All  this  great,  riant,  blooming,  perfumed, 
Tnusic-filled  world  was  for  him  and  his  beau 
tiful  companion.  Well  might  it  be  said  that 


GENESIS  OF  BIRD-SONG.  99 

they  were  in  a  garden,  an  Eden.  Well  might 
the  gush  of  song  from  a  myriad  swelling 
throats,  around,  above,  everywhere,  suggest 
that  the  very  stars  of  morning  were  singing 
together. 

I  am  inclined  to  the  belief,  from  my  own 
observation,  that  many  of  our  birds  are  still 
in  a  transition  state  as  regards  the  develop- 
ment of  their  vocal  organs.  Take  the  wood- 
peckers, a  very  unmusical  family,  and  we 
shall  find  the  golden-wing  giving  some  evi- 
dence of  acquiring  a  song,  apace  with  his 
departure  from  the  true  woodpecker  habit. 
The  wood-thrush  appears  to  lack  a  million 
years  or  so  of  practice  and  hereditary  devel- 
opment to  make  him  sing  as  well  as  the 
mocking-bird,  though  his  voice  is  as  sweet  as 
a  silver  bell.  The  meadow-lark  is  very  nearly 
a  singer,  so  is  the  bluebird,  whilst  the  blue- 
iay  sloes  at  rare  intervals  render  a  low,  mel- 
low, incomparably  pure  flute  passage,  as  if 
whistling  a  snatch  from  a  future  score  of  its 
own.  The*  tufted  tit-mouse  stops  just  short 
of  what  one  fancies  would  be  a  fine,  clear  lay, 
and  the  cardinal  grossbeak  puts  on  all  the 
airs  of  an  accomplished  musician,  without 
being  quite  able  to  find  a  tune. 

Comparative  anatomy  bears  out  these  sug- 
gestions, showing  that  development  of  voice 
,  in  birds  runs  quite  along  with  the  develop- 
ment of  the  syrinx,  whilst  development  of 
song  power  keeps  well  up  with  and  is  depend- 
ent on  the  correlative  efficiency  of  the  syrinx 
and  mouth  arrangement.  No  crow,  or  black- 
bird (American),  or  other  songless  oscine  is 
capable  of  learning  to  sing,  nor  can  it  be,  un- 
til a  change  shall  have  taken  place,  not  in  its 
larynx  or  syrinx,  but  in  the  shape  of  the  pos- 
terior part  of  its  mouth  with  relation  to  its 


100  SYLVAN  SECRETS. 

tongue  and  the  opening  of  the  trachea.  In 
every  case  where  a  bird  approaches  the  mar- 
gin of  song-making  it  will  be  found  to  possess 
a  mouth  arrangement  superior  to  that  of  birds 
which  have  no  tendency  toward  song.  Even 
the  mouth  and  tongue  of  the  golden- winged 
woodpecker  are  verging  in  the  direction  of 
the  true  development;  its  bill  is  growing 
slender  and  weak,  is  taking  on  the  song-bird 
curve,  and  the  posterior  part  of  the  tongue  is 
being  modified.  Indeed,  Colaptes  auratus  is 
much  nearer  the  true  singing  bird's  estate 
than  any  rook,  no  matter  how  beautifully  de- 
veloped its  syiinx,  but  it  is  not  nearer  the 
possession  of  the  greatest  vocal  power,  the 
power  of  articulate  expression. 

Such  is  a  hasty  glimpse  of  the  genesis  of 
bird-song,  a  subject  which  might  well  have  a 
volume  devoted  to  it ;  for  so  long  as  Keat's 
ode  to  a  nightingale  and  Shelley's  to  a  sky-lark 
shall  exist,  no  one  dare  say  that  bird-song  is 
not  worthy  of  the  highest  attention. 


THE 

ANATOMY  OF  BIKD-SONG. 


THE  vocal  organs  of  the  birds  have  received 
much  attention  from  the  comparative  anato 
mists,  and  have  been  the  subject  of  many 
theories,  accompanied  with  more  or  less  figur- 
ing and  minute  description.  Ms  cgillivray  hat 
been  followed  pretty  closely  by  all  the  bird 
anatomists  since  he  wrote  his  British  Birds, 
and  especially  has  his  exposition  of  the  office 
and  modus  operandi  of  the  so-called  syrina 
been  accepted  as  if  without  question  Pet 
haps  the  best  work  yet  done  in  this  field  so  fa 
as  it  goes  (and  outside  of  Macgillivray's)  i* 
Miiller's  Researches,  Berlin  Ac.  1845,  though 
Owen  and  Parker  and  Huxley,  not  to  mention 
a  great  many  others,  have  touched  the  subject 
with  deft  hands  in  passing  by.  As  a  rule, 
however,  and  naturally  enough,  the  attention 
of  all  these  competent  scientists  has  been 
directed  more  particularly  to  the  anatomical 
side  of  the  subject,  to  the  neglect,  in  some 
degree  at  least,  of  the  physiological  side.  The 
syrinx,  a  peculiar  valve-box  attached  to  and 
forming  a  specialized  part  of  the  oscine  larynx, 
has  been  described  over  and  over  again,  and 
song-making  assigned  as  its  function.  Curi- 
ously enough,  Macgillivray's  famous  drawings 
— the  figures  upon  which  everybody  has  been 
content  to  rely  for  so  many  years — were 
made  from  a  rook,  a  bird  without  a  singing 
voice,  though  possessed  of  what  is  called  the 
typical  oscine  syrinx. 

Some  years  ago,  while  dissecting,  a  meadow- 
lark  I  became  sceptical  upon  the  subject  of  the 


102      THE  ANATOMY  OF  BIRD-SONG. 

bird-voice  being  formed  or  originated  in  the 
syrinx.  I  admit  that  my  doubt  had  no  scien- 
tific basis  at  first,  for  it  was  suggested  by  the 
feeble  and  insignificant  appearance  of  the 
organ,  but  it  bore  upon  my  mind  with  suffi- 
cient weight  to  send  me  back  to  the  books  for  a 
re-study  of  the  subject.  There  were  Macgil- 
livray's  figures  again,  drawn  from  the  larynx 
and  syrinx  of  the  rook,  a  typical  oscine,  and 
there  was  Professor  Huxley's  singularly  clear 
description,  accepted  by  everybody.  But  the 
doubt  had  got  into  my  mind  unbidden  and  it 
would  not  obey  when  I  ordered  it  out.  So  I 
set  about  making  original  investigations, 
which  have  taken  much  time  and  covered  a 
great  deal  more  ground  than  I  intended,  and 
which,  nevertheless,  are  yet  far  from  complete. 
I  began  by  making  first  a  thorough  study  of 
the  construction  of  the  oscine  larynx  from 
specimens  collected  by  myself.  In  doing  this 
I  took  from  various  species  the  larynx  and 
syrinx  with  the  tongue  attached,  and  com- 
pared them  in  every  way,  making  minutely 
copious  notes  and  sketches  as  I  went  along. 
Next  I  dissected  these  members  with  a  view 
to  becoming  certainly  familiar  with  their 
structure  and  with  their  mode  of  action  inde- 
pendently and  correlatively .  At  the  same 
time  every  anatomical  feature  of  the  bird's 
mouth  was  studied  and  experimented  upon 
with  full  sketches  and  notes.  As  an  aid  to 
my  investigations  with  knife,  needle,  and 
microscope,  I  patiently  and  closely  watched 
caged  birds  while  singing,  and  with  a  powerful 
field-glass  gave  wild  birds  the  same  attention 
during  their  lyrical  performances. 

It  may  not  be  out  of  place  to  state  that  in 
the  course  of  all  these  studies  I  made  journeys 
which,  taken  together,  have  covered  a  large 
part  of  the  territory  east  .of  the  Mississippi 
River  and  west  of  the  Alleghany  Mountains' 


THE  ANATOMY  OF  BIRD-SONG.       103 

and  between  Lake  Superior  and  the  Gulf  of 
Mexico.  My  work  has  been  prosecuted  every 
month  of  the  year,  and  my  birds  have  been  o( 
every  age  from  nestlings  up,  and  while  I  have 
taken  the  syrinx  and  other  members  of  the 
vocal  organ  from  the  male  rather  than  from 
the  female,  still  I  have  not  neglected  the 
latter. 

Finally,  as  a  part  of  my  self-appointed  task, 
I  have  examined  by  every  method  I  could 
command,  the  voice  qualities  possessed  by  our 
song-birds.  This  last  I  consider  of  importance 
in  view  of  the  fact  that  a  difference  in  voice 
quality  naturally  suggests  a  difference  of 
some  degree  in  the  development  of  the  vocal 
organs.  The  timbre,  or,  for  that  matter,  any 
quality  of  bird-voice  varies  as  much  between 
species  as  does  the  appearance  of  any  notable 
physical  feature,  whilst  among  the  true  sing- 
ers there  is  no  appreciable  difference  of 
syrinx-development,  so  far  as  my  examina- 
tions have  disclosed,  but  of  this  in  the  proper 
place. 

If  the  question  arise,  and  I  must  answer 
why  I  have  made  this  study,  I  shall  deem  it 
enough  for  me  to  say  that  I  had  to  do  it.  The 
subject  took  hold  of  me  and  would  not  be 
shaken  off.  The  birds,  singly,  in  wisps,  and  in 
clamorous  mobs,  assaulted  me  with  their 
melodious  missiles,  and  taunted  me  with  the 
mystery  of  their  song-power.  In  the  dark 
woods  of  the  Middle  West,  along  the  shores 
of  the  Northern  lakes,  in  the  blooming  thick- 
ets of  the  Florida  peninsula,  in  the  swamps  of 
the  Creole  country,  and  all  through  the  pictur- 
esque hill  region  of  Alabama,  Georgia,  the 
Carolinas,  and  Tennessee,  they  had  jeered 
at  me,  laughed  at  me,  scolded  me,  and 
whistled  me  to  scorn,  and  then,  to  com- 
plete my  perplexity,  they  had  sung  me  to 
sleep  and  sung  me  awake  with  delicate  and 


104      THE  ANATOMY  OF  BIRD-SONG. 

delicious  phrases  as  new  and  fresh  as  dew, 
and  yet  as  old  as  the  sea.  I  could  not  get  rid 
of  them,  even  when  I  shut  myself  in  my 
study.  If  I  turned  to  the  poets,  there  were 
the  nightingale  and  the  dove,  the  mavis,  the 
eky-lark  and  the  oriole  singing  away  for  dear 
life;  from  the  preludes  to  Greek  folk-songs 
and  from  the  ballads  of  the  love-sick  Proven- 
gal  tramp,  or  from  the  roundel  of  the  steel-clad 
knight  as  he  rode  along  the  dusty  highway 
with  the  Rhone  on  one  hand  and  the  vine- 
yards on  the  other,  I  heard  the  bird-notes 
bubble  out  to  mingle  with  the  tinkle  of  cith- 
ern and  the  quaver  of  hautbois.  The  orators, 
the  essayists,  the  preachers,  and  all  the  tribes 
of  romancers  brought  me  echoes  of  sylvan 
fluting.  Then  if  I  turned  to  the  pages  of 
science  and  rushed  to  the  extreme  of  "solid 
reading,"  I  fared  no  better;  for  even  the  rec- 
ords ef  geology  eulogized  the  birds,  and  I 
heard  strange  twitterings  of  avian  voices 
trickling  like  spring-streams  out  of  the  an- 
cient rocks.  Not  less  in  the  books  than  in 
the  woods  and  fields  was  bird-song  tantaliz- 
ing, for  at  every  point  some  subtle  and  elusive 
suggestion  arose,  only  to  escape  final  analysis. 
Keats,  in  his  Ode  to  a  Nightingale  blows 
through  his  words  something  inexpressible 
which  haunts  and  taunts  the  understanding 
like  a  half -forgotten  strain  of  dream  music, 
and  the  same  mysterious  challenge  to  one's 
soul  exhales  from  the  strange  inscriptions 
sketched  in  the  deep-buried  stones  of  aeons 
ago,  where  the  fragments  of  vanished  bird- 
forms  hint  of  unknowable  life-forces  dried  up 
long  before  man  felt  the  breath  of  God.  One 
must  say  this  reverently  and  with  no  ques- 
tion of  a  clash  between  Nature  and  the  in- 
spired record  arising  in  one's  mind,  for  the 
Bible  is  not  a  natural-history  book,  nor  is 
geology  a  scheme  of  salvation.  There  is  no 


THE  ANATOMY  OF  BIRD-SONG.       105 

clash  between  the  two.  But  to  the  bird- 
voices  that  have  charmed  all  manner  of  men 
and  women,  let  us  turn  in  the  spirit  of  the 
truth-seeker,  and  leave  the  fools  biting  the 
iron  spikes  of  vain  contention.  There  shall 
be  neither  vagary  nor  agnosticism  in  our  per- 
formances; we  will  simply  look  into  the 
birds'  mouths,  and  inquire  about  their  tender 
flutiiigs,  and  examine  their  melodious  throats. 

Nor  will  we  indulge  in  the  precious  jargon 
of  the  sciences,  any  further  than  to  borrow  a 
few  of  its  most  necessary  technical  words  and 
phrases  in  case  we  are  hard  pressed  for  a 
means  of  lucid  expression. 

Study  in  the  fields  and  woods  is  so  different 
from  study  in  the  library  and  laboratory, 
that  in  writing  of  it  one  is  apt  to  forget  to 
respect  that  dusty,  musty  air  and  that 
skeleton-like  stiffness  of  style  so  dear  to  the 
heart  of  the  closet  scientist.  After  all,  how- 
ever, it  is  quite  probable  that  there  really  is 
nothing  in  truth  which  demands  or  deserves 
the  ill  treatment  implied  by  harsh  words  and 
unmelodious  phrasing.  Indeed  I  sometimes 
wonder  that  comparative  anatomists  are  not 
all  poets,  like  Goethe,  or  seers,  like  Emerson. 
The  truths  of  biology  are  so  perfectly  out- 
lined, and  yet  so  dim,  so  near,  and  yet  so 
unreachable,  so  set  in  an  atmosphere  of  fasci- 
nating mystery,  so  suggestive  of  inexpressible 
things  hovering  just  beyond  the  reach  of 
thought,  that  the  imagination  strikes  at  them, 
as  a  bird  might  strike  at  its  own  shining  re- 
flection in  a  shimmering  summer  pool.  I 
dare  say  that  one  manifestation  of  life  is  just 
as  mysterious  as  any  other ;  but  the  mystery 
of  song,  having  the  charm  we  all  know  yet 
cannot  explain,  is  a  double  mystery.  Emer- 
son understood  it  well  when  he  exclaimed : 

"  Aloft,  in  secret  veins  of  air, 
Blows  the  sweet  breath  of  song  1 " 


1 00      THE  ANATOMY  OF  BIRD-SONG. 

II. 

In  his  description  of  the  syrinx,  Huxley, 
taking  it  for  granted  that  bird-song  is  gener- 
ated in  that  organ,  declares:  "The  voice  of 
birds  is  not  formed  in  the  larynx,  but  in  the 
eyrinx." 

To  understand  what  is  meant  by  this  state- 
ment, let  us  examine  the  anatomy  of  a  typical 
bird-syrinx.  If  for  this  purpose  we  kill  a 
rook,  as  did  Macgillivray,  and  proceed  to  cut 
out  its  tongue  with  the  entire  tracheal  column 
attached,  we  shall  find  that  the  opening  of 
the  trachea  is  just  posterior  to  the  root  of  the 
tongue.  From  this  opening,  down  to  where 
it  is  divided  into  two  bronchial  tubes,  the 
trachea  of  most  song-birds  slightly  decreases 
in  diameter.  At  the  point  of  division,  how- 
ever, a  peculiar  modification  of  structure 
takes  place.  This  modification  of  the  trachea 
is  the  syrinx,  which,  viewed  exteriorly,  is  a 
roundish  bundle  of  muscular  fiber  covering 
the  bony  and  cartilaginous  frame  of  the 
organ,  whilst  its  interior  is  a  delicate  but 
firmly  adjusted  system  of  valves.  The  main 
body  of  the  tracheal  column  is  an  elastic  tube 
of  long  rings  held  together  by  a  tough  and 
flexible  covering,  and  furnished  with  muscles 
by  which  it  may  be  shortened  or  elongated  at 
the  will  of  the  bird. 

The  glottis,  as  the  opening  of  the  trachea  is 
called,  is  a  slit  somewhat  elliptical  in  its 
general  form,  set  between  the  barb-like 
prongs  of  the  hyoid  bone.  This  opening  is 
furnished  with  a  rim  of  muscle  and  mem- 
brane and  can  be  opened,  closed,  or  made  to 
assume  a  great  variety  of  forms  at  the  bird's 
will.  Immediately  over  the  glottis,  in  the 
roof  of  the  bird's  mouth  is  a  narrow  longi- 
tudinal groove  that  in  its  anterior  extremity 
ips  exactly  formed  to  receive  the  bony  tip  of 


THE  ANATOMY  OF  BIRD-SONG.       107 

the  tongue,  which  in  true  song-birds  thins 
down  to  a  very  delicate  degree.  All  the 
movements  of  the  glottis  are  intimately  con- 
nected with  those  of  the  tongue,  so  that  the 
latter  organ,  as  will  be  seen  presently,  has 
much  to  do  with  bird-song;  indeed  it  has 
much  more  to  do  with  it  than  has  the  syrinx. 

Sound,  as  exemplified  in  the  aviaii  voice,  is 
the"  vibration  of  a  column  of  air  by  an  expul- 
sion of  breath  from  the  lungs  through  the 
glottis  into  the  mouth  cavity.  Properly 
speaking,  there  is  no  such  thing,  as  a  bird 
voice  in  the  popular  meaning  of  the  word 
italicised.  A  bird  whistles,  chirrups,  twit- 
ters, clucks,  croaks,  quacks  etc. ;  but  every 
sound  it  utters  is  a  wind-note  as  pure  and 
simple,  so  far  as  if!&  origin  is  concerned,  as 
any  note  of  a  flute.  There  is  no  such  thing 
as  a  bird's  vocal  cord.  No  sound  ever  had  its 
origin  in  a  bird's  so-called  syrinx.  The  vibra- 
tion of  a  membrane  has  nothing  whatever  to 
do  with  creating  the  sounds  uttered  by  birds, 
but  it  may  modify  and  vary  the  form  of 
those  sounds. 

Without  appealing  to  the  anatomical  evi- 
dence, which,  however,  I  shall  not  neglect  to 
do  in  the  proper  place,  I  might  suggest  some 
general  objections  to  the  syrinx  theory.  For 
instance,  some  of  the  pure,  clear  notes  uttered 
by  a  mocking-bird  may  be  heard,  on  a  favora- 
ble morning,  at  a  distance  of  nearly  or  quite 
half  a  mile.  The  so-called  vocal  cords  of  this 
bird's  syrinx  are  less  than  the  sixteenth  of  an 
inch  in  length,  and  are  stowed  in  a  thickening 
of  the  trachea  some  two  inches  below  its 
opening.  Now  how  can  it  be  possible  for  so 
strong,  clear,  and  pu^e  a  sound  to  be  generated 
by  so  short  and  feetife  a  cord,  and  at  the  bot- 
tom of  so  long  and  slender  a  tube  ?  Let  me 
ask  the  reader  to  pause  just  here  and  whistle, 
carefully  noting  that  the  sound  is  created  in 


108      THE  ANATOMY  OF  BIRD-SONG. 

the  oval  orifice  formed  for  the  purpose  by  the 
lips,  and  that  the  pitch  and  tone  quality  are 
governed  by  the  cavity  of  the  whistler's 
mouth  and  throat.  In  other  words,  the  notes 
in  whistling  are  caused  by  the  breath  from 
the  lungs  passing  through  the  opening  be- 
tween the  lips,  and  they  are  given  character  by 
the  volume  and  length  of  the  vibratory  col- 
umn of  air  in  the  mouth  and  trachea  of  the 
whistler.  Now  make  a  deep  cup  of  your 
hand  and  hold  it  over  your  mouth  while  you 
whistle.  You.  find  by  careful  experiment 
that  any  interference  with  the  column  of  air 
in  front  of  the  mouth-orifice  also  curiously 
modifies  the  sounds. 

The  bird's  glottis  is  the  whistling  orifice; 
there  the  sounds  are  generated,  and  their 
character  is  controlled  by  the  vibrations  of 
two  columns  of  air,  one  in  the  trachea,  the 
other  in  the  cavity  of  the  bird's  mouth  and 
throat.  The  glottis  is  set  in  the  midst  of  a 
tangle  of  muscles,  fibrous  tendons,  and  elastic 
membranes  belonging  to  itself,  the  tongue, 
the  mouth,  and  the  throat  of  the  bird.  Any 
movement  of  the  tongue,  the  throat,  or  the 
mandibles  of  the  bird  affects  the  glottis  in 
some  degree,  so  that  in  the  case  of  the  best 
songsters  some  of  the  vocal  movements  are 
intricately  compound,  and  consequently  the 
sounds  produced  are  likewise  compound, 
but  not  in  origin,  simply  in  modification. 
For  instance,  in  the  croaking  of  a  yellow- 
billed  cuckoo,  the  sounds  are  begun  at  the 
glottis  and  would  be  clear  whistle-notes  but 
for  the  form  assumed  by  the  bird's  mouth  and 
throat,  and  the  vibratory  reflection  caused  by 
the  action  of  the  elastic  membranes  against 
which  the  bird's  breath  impinges  as  it  leaps 
from  the  trachea.  The  fact  that  the  sounds 
uttered  by  the  crows,  the  cuckoos,  and  many 
other  oscines  are  gutteral  in  effect  has  led  to 


THE  ANATOMY  OF  BIRD-SONG.       109 

gross  error  in  the  conclusions  arrived  at  by 
writers  upon  the  subject  of  bird-song.  The 
harsh  croaking  notes,  when  closely  observed, 
are  found  actually  to  begin  as  if  the  bird  were 
going  to  whistle ;  but  the  sounds  are  arrested 
by  the  tongue  and  mouth-roof,  and  flung  back 
into  the  throat,  so  to  speak,  where  they  are 
distorted,  broken,  and  specialized  into  a  char- 
acteristic rasping  gurgle-phrase,  which  at  a 
distance  is  taken  for  a  genuine  voice-effect, 
because  of  the  peculiar  jar  or  vibration  of  the 
throat  and  mouth  membranes  communicated 
to  the  reflected  air-column  above  and  posterior 
to  the  glottis. 

It  is  quite  the  habit  of  ornithologists  to  allege 
that  a  rook  or  a  shrike  has  just  as  good  a 
vocal  organ  as  a  mocking-bird  or  a  wood- 
thrush,  and,  viewing  the  syrinx  as  such 
organ,  doubtless  they  are  right;  the  error  re- 
sides in  the  point  of  view.  The  very  fact  that 
a  logger-head  shrike  with  its  preposterous 
rasp- voice  has  a  really  larger  and  better  syr- 
inx than  the  robin,  or  the  mocking-bird,  or 
any  other  sweet  singer,  ought  of  itself  to  give 
rise  to  some  doubt  as  to  whether  the  voige- 
organ  of  the  birds  has  been  rightly  located  by 
the  anatomists.  Prof.  Huxley's  description 
of  the  bird-syrinx  is  admirable  in  every  way ; 
no  one  can  find  fault  with  it  from  the  anatomi 
cal  point  of  view ;  but  he  assumes  the  physi- 
ological part  of  the  problem,  or  rather  takes 
the  function  of  the  so-called  organ  as  granted 
without  proof.  It  is  clear  to  my  mind  that 
he  was  led  to  do  this  by  Macgillivray's  brill- 
iant treatment  of  the  subject,  and  Parker 
all  but  admits  that  he  has  submitted  to  the 
same  influence.  Dr.  Elliot  Coues  simply  adopts 
the  reasoning  and  presents  the  plates  of  Mac- 
gillivray's  work.  Indeed  it  appears,  so  far 
as  I  know,  that  no  biologist  since  Macgillivray 


110      THE  ANATOMY  OF  BIRD-SONG. 

has  given  the  subject  thorough  analysis  at 
first  hand. 

Let  us  now  examine  the  avian  syrinx  with 
a  view  to  settling  the  question  whether  or  not 
it  is  a  song-making  organ.  In  doing  this  we 
will  choose  the  syrinx  of  an  accomplished 
singer,  so  that  there  may  be  no  doubt  in  the 
matter. 

In  making  my  dissections  and  other  studies 
I  began  with  the  mocking-bird  and  ended 
with  the  wood-thrush,  branching  out  between 
these  to  take  in  many  birds  not  singers  at  all. 

The  syrinx  of  the  mocking-bird  will  serve 
our  purpose  just  now. 

III. 

The  syrinx  of  the  mocking-bird  is  situated 
in  the  cavity  of  the  bird's  breast  near  the 
upper  part  of  the  lungs  and  it  is  made  up  of 
the  following  parts :  A  slight  enlargement  of 
the  lower  rings  of  the  trachea,  forming  a 
drum  divided  internally  at  its  posterior  ex- 
tremity by  a  bony  cross-piece  called  the  pes- 
sulus,  a  membranous  cartilage  rising  above 
the  pessulus  a  little  way  into  the  trachea 
proper,  dividing  the  hollow  thereof  into 
halves,  and  a  wisp  of  delicate  muscles.  The 
trachea  forks  at  the  lower  part  of  the  syrinx 
into,  two  bronchial  tubes  that  pass  directly  to 
the  lungs  right  and  left. 

The  reader  may  get  an  excellent  idea  of  a 
mocking-bird's  trachea  and  syrinx  by  imag- 
ining for  the  trachea  a  hollow  large-sized 
broom-straw  an  inch  and  a  half  in  length,  one 
end  of  which  is  the  glottis,  and  the  other  end, 
slightly  enlarged,  the  syrinx,  out  of  which 
the  bronchial  tubes  pass  at  an  angle  with  each 
other  of  some  fifty  degrees.  Further,  imagine 
this  bifurcated  lower  end  of  the  broom-straw 
to  be  furnished  with  a  valve-like  division- 
wall  rising  a  little  way  up  its  hollow,  just 


THE  ANATOMY  OF  BIRD-SONG.       Ill 

above  the  point  of  bifurcation.  In  other 
words,  imagine  the  hollow  of  the  syrinx  (lower 
end  of  the  straw)  divided  into  two  equal 
apartments  by  a  thin  vertical  wall,  whilst 
from  each  apartment  passes  a  smaller  tube 
just  like  the  trachea  (the  straw).  Such  is  a 
general  description  of  what  has  heretofore 
been  considered  the  song-organ  of  the  highest 
kind  of  bird.  I  cannot  do  better,  however, 
than  to  add  here  a  condensation  of  the  de- 
tailed description  prepared  by  Prof.  Huxley : 
1st,  The  trachea  is  a  hollow  cylinder  formed 
by  bony  rings.  2nd,  "The  hindermost  (lowest) 
rings  of  the  trachea  coalesce  and  form  a  pe- 
culiarly arranged  chamber  immediately  be- 
yond (below)  which  the  bronchi  diverge,  and 
from  their  posterior  wall,  where  one  bronchus 
passes  into  the  other,  a  vertical  fold  of  the 
lining  membrane  rises  in  the  middle  towards 
the  tympanum  (syrinx  chamber)  and  forms  a 
vertical  septum  between  the  anterior  aper- 
tures of  the  two  bronchi.  The  anterior  edg^ 
of  this  septum  is  a  free  and  thin  membrana 
semilunaris,  but  in  its  interior  a  cartilagin- 
ous or  osseus  frame  is  developed  and  becomes 
united  with  the  tympanum.  The  base  of  this 
frame  sends  out  two  cornua,  one  along  the 
dorsal,  the  other  along  the  ventral  edge  of  the 
inner  wall  of  the  bronchus  of  its  side,  which 
in  this  part  of  its  extent  is  membranous  and 
elastic,  and  named  the  membrana  tympani- 
formis  interna.  Opposite  this  the  bronchial 
rings  are  incomplete,  and  have  the  form  of 
arches  embracing  the  outer  moiety  of  the 
bronchus.  The  second  and  third  of  these 
bronchial  arcs  are  freely  movable,  and  elastic 
tissue  accumulated  upon  their  inner  surfaces 
gives  rise  to  a  fold  of  the  mucous  membrane 
which  forms  the  outer  boundary  of  a  cleft, 
bounded  on  the  inner  side  by  the  membrana 
semilunaris.  The  air  forced  through  these 


112      THE  ANATOMY  OF  BIRD-SONG. 

two  clefts  from  the  lungs  sets  these  elastic 
margins  vibrating,  and  thus  gives  rise  to  a 
musical  note,  the  character  of  which  is  chiefly 
determined  by  the  tension  of  the  elastic  mar- 
gins and  the  length  of  the  tracheal  column  of 
air.  The  muscles  by  the  contraction  of  which 
these  two  factors  of  the  voice  are  modified, 
are  extrinsic  and  intrinsic." 

In  the  case  of  every  true  song  bird  that  I 
have  examined  there  are  six  pairs  of  intrin- 
sic muscles  controlling  the  tympanum  and 
bronchial  arcs.  By  the  contraction  of  these 
muscles,  the  arcs  and  the  tympanum  are 
moved  in  a  variety  of  ways.  The  mocking- 
bird, however,  has  much  weaker  syrinx  mus- 
cles than  the  shripe,  the  cuckoo,  or  the  blue- 
jay,  though  if  Prof.  Huxley's  theory  of  song- 
generation  is  correct,  the  mocking-bird's 
organ  should  be  much  the  more  powerful  in 
every  respect. 

The  "fold"  of  membrane  described  by 
Prof.  Huxley  as  occupying  the  inner  surface 
of  the  free  arcs  of  each  bronchus  and  the 
membranous  edge  of  the  frame  of  the  pessu- 
lus  are  really  delicate  valves  whose  function 
or  office  is  quite  different  from  that  assigned 
to  them  by  the  anatomists. 

The  minute  intrinsic  muscles  controlling  the 
mocking-bird's  syringeal  membranous  pro- 
jections are  so  arranged  that  the  mouths  of 
the  bronchial  tubes  may  be  almost,  if  not 
quite,  closed  by  the  extension  of  the  ''folds," 
or  elastic  margins,  and  by  this  means  the 
bird  is  enabled  to  measure  in  the  nicest  man- 
ner the  amount  of  air  thrown  from  the  lungs 
into  the  trachea.  Thus  when  it  is  whistling 
a  rapid  staccato,  the  delicately  modulated 
notes  following  one  another  like  raindrops  in 
a  shower,  these  valves  in  the  syrinx  are  doling 
out  the  air  in  precisely  the  right  quantities 


THE  ANATOMY  OF  BIRD-SONG.       113 

and  at  exactly  the  proper  intervals  for 
the  purpose  in  view. 

The  so-called  vocal  cords  in  the  syrinx 
of  a  blue-bird  (Sialia  sialis)  are  less  than 
the  twentieth  of  an  inch  in  greatest  ex- 
tent. Indeed  the  free  membrane  of  the 
septum  is  scarcely  discoverable  with  the 
naked  eye,  and  yet  -  the  fife-notes  of  that 
beautiful  bird  may  be  heard  far  across 
the  summer  fields,  sweet,  clear,  mellow 
as  the  softest  quaver  of  the  flute  d' amour,  all 
owing,  as  the  great  anatomists  would  have 
it,  to  the  vibrations  of  those  deep-set  infini- 
tesimal membranous  margins ! 

The  chief  stumbling-block  of  all  the  investi- 
gators has  been  that  they  have  taken  it  for 
granted  that  birds  have  voices  like  those  of 
the  mammals,  and  that  consequently  each 
singer  must  have  a  set  of  vibrating  vocal 
cords  somewhere  in  his  breathing  tube ;  when 
in  fact  the  avian  musician's  syrinx  has  no 
more  need  for  vocal  cords  than  had  the 
famous  syrinx  or  Pan-pipe  of  the  ancient 
god. 

Let  us  again  consider  the  act  of  whistling. 
Note  the  fact  that  you  can  run  the  gamut 
without  perceptible  change  of  the  size  or  shape 
of  the  mouth  orifice,  the  sounds  being  graded 
by  controlling  the  size  of  the  air  column  be- 
hind the  orifice.  Now,  the  bird  in  whistling 
controls  both  the  size  of  the  orifice  and  the 
extent  of  the  air  columns  above  and  below 
the  glottis.  This  gives  him  a  range  .and  pow- 
er of  expression  not  to  be  approached  by  the 
human  whistler.  He  can  open  wide  his 
mouth  and  whistle,  as  does  the  quail,  with 
almost  deafening  shrillness  and  penetration, 
or,  closing  his  bill  until  a  mere  slit  is  seen  be- 
tween the  mandibles,  he  can  blow  a  dreamy 
hautbois  note,  slender  and  refined  as  ever 


114      THE  ANATOMY  OF  BIRD-SONG. 

stirred  the  air  of  Arcady,  or  trembled  in  the 
vineyards  of  old  Provence. 

But  bird-song  cannot  have  its  mystery 
wholly  solved  by  dissection.  The  parts  of  the 
organs  are  so  extremely  minute  and  so  ob- 
scure in  their  connection  and  correlation  that 
we  must  turn  to  extrinsic  and  general  obser- 
vations for  assistance*  in  interpreting  their 
functions.  With  this  view,  let  us  go  watch 
a  mocking-bird  while  he  sings. 

IV. 

Everybody  has  noticed  how  a  singing  bird 
expands  and  compresses  its  throat  just  below 
and  between  the  prongs  of  the  lower  mandible 
during  the  utterance  of  its  musical  phrases. 
When  the  notes  are  keen  and  shrill,  the  throat 
is  drawn  close,  and  when  a  grave  passage  is 
blown,  the  throat  is  puffed  out  like  that  of  a 
toad.  This  puffing  process  is  not  merely  a 
lengthening  of  the  trachea  (or  tracheal  column 
of  air),  as  Prof.  Huxley  would  have  us  be- 
lieve it  is ;  it  is  more.  The  posterior  cavity  of 
the  mouth  is  greatly  expanded  laterally,  ver- 
tically, and  longitudinally,  so  as  to  form  a 
hollow  drum  behind  the  glottis.  Into  this 
chamber  (lined  with  tightly  drawn  mem- 
branes) the  breath  from  the  glottis  is  reflect- 
ed by  the  tongue  and  the  anterior  part  of  the 
roof  of  the  mouth;  there  its  vibrations  are 
communicated  to  the  largest  possible  column 
of  air,  sounding  the  gravest  notes  of  the  bird's 
voice.  When  the  throat  is  compressed,  this 
drum  or  chamber  is  reduced  to  the  minimum, 
and  the  vibrant  column  of  air  gives  forth  the 
sharpest  sounds  possible  to  the  organ. 

Observe  the  mocking-bird  or  the  brown 
thrush,  as  it  sings 

"  Of  summer  in  full-throated  ease," 
and  you  will  see  that  the  lengthening  or  short- 
ening of  the  tracheal  column  has  but  little  to 


THE  ANATOMY  OF  BIRD-SONG.       115 

do  with  the  relative  yalues  of  the  notes.  I 
have  seen  a  mocking-bird  with  its  chin  resting 
upon  its  breast  run  the  full  compass  of  its 
voice ;  whilst,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  not  un- 
common for  it  to  ut  ter  every  note  it  has 
mastered,  with  its  neck  at  full  stretch.  Such 
feats  are  possible  on  account  of  the  exceeding 
elasticity  of  the  walls  of  the  posterior  mouth- 
cavity  and  the  anterior  throat-cavity.  The 
shortening  of  the  trachea  really  does  this :  it 
gives  the  lungs  greater  power  to  act  directly 
upon  the  glottis,  thus  adding  volume  to  the 
notes.  For  instance,  if  you  watch  a  quail  as 
it  whistles  "  Bob  White,"  you  will  note  that 
its  head  moves  up  and  down  with  the  length- 
ening And  shortening  of  the  trachea  necessary 
to  the  extremes  of  power  required.  The  yel- 
low-billed cuckoo,  muttering  its  well-known 
croak,  slightly  elevates  its  beak,  and  you  can 
see  its  upper  throat  palpitating  in  accord  with 
the  rattling  notes.  Indeed,  it  appears  to  be 
sucking  the  sounds  back  from  the  glottis  into 
the  hollow  of  the  mouth  and  throat,  where 
they  are  shaken  about  like  peas  in  a  box  ! 
All  the  common  song-birds  have  a  way  of  ut- 
tering falsetto  notes  occasionally.  The  most 
notable  example  of  this  is  the  nocturn  of  the 
mocking-bird,  in  which  falsetto  phrases  are 
used  with  singularly  plaintive  and  touching 
effect.  After  careful  study,  I  have  concluded 
that  the  notes  above  described  are  produced 
by  a  division  of  the  vibrating  air-column  in  the 
mouth,  caused  by  the  bird  drawing  its  tongue 
back  nearly  over  the  glottis,  while  the  man- 
dibles are  kept  as  nearly  closed  as  possible. 
The  brown  thrush  is  expert  in  rendering  very 
delicate  falsetto  sketches,  and  watching  him 
with  a  strong  field-glass  has  convinced  me 
that  I  have  correctly  described  his  method. 
The  caged  mocking-bird  rarely  indulges  in 
this  delicious  music — and  therefore  is  iard  to 


116      THE  ANATOMY  OF  BIRD-SONG. 

study,  since  his  falsetto  in  his  wild  state  is 
mostly  a  nocturnal  performance. 

The  sparrows, the  thrushes,  the  meadow-lark, 
and  some  of  the  warblers  elevate  their  heads 
(with  their  beaks  at  an  angle  of  at  least  forty- 
five  degrees  with  the  horizon)  in  singing.  It 
is  by  this  attitude  that  they  can  give  greatest 
freedom  to  their  throats.  Other  songsters, 
including  the  orioles,  the  blue-bird,  and  most 
of  the  smaller  fry,  utter  their  notes  while  in 
any  position,  even  on  the  wing. 

I  have  called  attention  to  these  extrinsic 
features  of  the  song-habit  in  birds  because  I 
deem  them  of  great  value  in  determining  the 
voice  functions  of  the  trachea  and  syrinx  of 
the  o  seines. 

V. 

The  most  difficult  question  in  our  investiga- 
tion arises  out  of  the  unmusical  notes— the 
quacks,  croaks,  jarring  cries,  and  cackling 
noises  made  by  the  birds  when  not  inclined 
to  whistle.  If,  on  one  hand,  a  pure  flute  note 
cannot  be  made  by  the  vibration  of  the  mi- 
nute syringeal  membranes  of  a  mocking-bird, 
it  would  appear,  on  the  other  hand,  that  a 
hoarse,  gutteral,  rasping  snarl  could  not  bo 
originated  by  a  whistling  orifice,  or,  in  other 
words,  by  the  glottis  of  a  mocking-bird,  a 
crow,  or  a  meadow-lark ;  but  a  little  attention 
will  clear  up  the  trouble.  When  we  are  very 
near  the  crow,  for  instance,  his  voice  divides 
itself  into  two  distinct  sounds,  one  a  clear, 
steady  wind-note,  the  other  a  jarring  noise, 
harsh  and  disagreeable.  The  effect  is  the 
well-known  caw,  sometimes  successfully  imi- 
tated by  n  boy  making  a  nasal  sound  in  his 
hollowed  hands.  The  jarring  or  rasping  ele- 
ment of  the  crow  s  voice  is  really  caused  by 
the  vibration  of  a  membrane,  but  it  is  not  a 
syringeal  membrane.  The  note  first  made  by 


THE  ANATOMY  OF  BIRD-SONG.      117 

the  breath  from  the  glottis  is  reflected  back 
by  the  bird's  lifted  tongue,  and  the  element  of 
harshness  is  caught  from  the  strained  and  vi- 
bratory membranes  of  the  mouth  and  the 
nasal  and  throat  cavities.  The  peculiar  part 
played  by  the  syrinx  in  this  case  is  that  by  a 
rocking,  quivering,  or  gyratory  motion  it  im- 
parts to  the  tracheal  column  of  air  sent  out 
through  the  glottis  a  spiral  or  palpitant  cur- 
rent. This  current  would  blow  a  quavering 
flute-note  of  some  sort  were  it  not  interrupted 
at  the  glottis  by  the  bird's  uplifted  tongue,  and 
broken  and  flung  back  into  the  throat  and 
nasal  cavities,  where  it  is  further  disintegrat- 
ed by  the  elastic  membranes,  as  already  men- 
tioned. 

The  parrot  is  a  strong  instance  of  a  bird  who 
has  a  wonderful  voice,  but  whose  syrinx  is 
weak  and  imperfect,  viewed  from  Prof.  Hux- 
ley's ground.  There  is  no  septum  or  median 
membrane  in  the  parrot's  organ,  and  there- 
fore one  "vocal  cord"  is  missing,  and  yet 
how  clear  is  his  whistle,  how  pure  his  reed- 
note  calls,  how  deep  and  how  incomparably 
rich  his  throat  cries !  Surely  all  these  are  not 
made  in  that  poor  little  half-equipped  syrinx  I 
The  thick,  heavy,  fleshy  tongue  of  the  parrot, 
and  the  spacious  throat-cavity  behind  it,  are 
the  special  means  by  which  its  voice  is  con- 
trolled and  enriched.  The  so-called  speaking 
voice  of  this  and  other  birds  is  a  lingual  and 
throat  modification  of  the  glottis  notes.  Again, 
the  large,  pad-like  tongue  of  the  parrot,  perfect- 
ly reflecting  the  breath  from  the  glottis  back 
into  the  throat-cavity,  gives  the  best  proof  of 
what  I  have  claimed,  by  producing  the 
closest  parody  of  a  genuine  voice  ever  uttered 
by  a  bird.  Just  here  is  the  place  to  say  that 
all  of  the  flute-voiced  birds  have  very  slender 
and  delicate  tongues.  I  have  before  me  as  I 
write  the  tongue  of  a  mocking-bird  and 


118      THE  ANATOMY  OF  BIRD-SONG. 

of  a  loggerhead  shrike,  each  attached  to  the 
trachea  and  syrinx  of  the  bird,  and  upon  com- 
parison the  shrike's  tongue  is  found  much 
the  thicker  and  clumsier,  though  without  any 
tendency  to  fleshiness.  The  tongues  of  the 
wood-thrush  and  the  mocking-bird  are  almost 
exactly  alike,  whilst  those  of  the  orchard-ori- 
ole and  the  bluebird  are  very  closely  similar. 

The  whole  arrangement  of  the  lower  man- 
dible (with  the  tongue  and  the  muscles  and 
membranes  clustered  about  it),  in  the  case  of 
the  real  songsters,  appears  to  be  modified 
with  reference  to  music-making.  In  execut- 
ing a  rapid  score,  the  mocking-bird's  tongue 
moves  like  a  vibrating  piece  of  steel,  and  the 
same  is  true  of  all  the  twitterers  and  brilliant 
voice-shakers.  Pure  flute- warbling,  however, 
is  performed  with  the  syrinx,  though  not  gen- 
erated in  it,  the  muscular  movements  at  the 
bottom  of  the  tracheal  column  letting  the  air 
out  of  the  lungs  in  palpitations  (like  those 
from  the  human  mouth  in  flute  or  fife  play- 
ing), and  imparting  to  it  various  degrees  of 
volume  and  velocity. 

The  tongue-notes  of  most  birds  are  easily  dis- 
tinguishable by  the  *4t"  sound  with  which 
they  begin— the  syllables  "tee"  and  "tit" 
often  recurring.  The  meadow-lark  utters  a 
cry  which  sounds  like  "  tith-h-h-t."  It  is 
made  by  breaking  a  prolonged  note  up  be- 
tween the  tongue  and  the  roof  of  the  mouth. 
The  red-winged  blackbird  renders  a  curious 
phrase  composed  of  a  "  shake"  and  a  tongue- 
note  combined.  A  friend  of  mine  character- 
izes the  performance  as  something  ' '  between 
a  snort  and  a  giggle."  The  belted  kingfisher 
has  a  way  of  chattering  through  a  chink  be- 
tween his  tongue  and  the  roof  of  his  mouth ; 
his  voice  is  a  very  keen  and  clear  one,  de- 
spite the  primitive  condition  of  his  voice- 
organs,  and  to  my  ear  it  is  not  without  a  cer- 


THE  ANATOMY  OP  BlfiD-SONG.      119 

tain  touch  of  picturesque  melody.  Even  the 
woodpeckers,  notably  Erythrocephalus  and 
Colaptes,  have  very  pure  fife-notes. 

But  let  us  now  turn  and  examine  the  true 
mouth  of  the  avian  flute. 

VI. 

The  upper  end  of  a  song-bird's  trachea  is 
peculiarly  modified,  terminating  in  a  chink 
or  slit  just  at  the  root  of  the  tongue.  This 
slit,  the  glottis,  is  surrounded  by  a  bundle  of 
muscles,  and  has  two  heavy  lips  by  which  it 
is  closed  at  the  bird's  will.  The  anterior  por- 
tion of  the  glottis  aperture  is  nearly  circular, 
but  it  terminates  posteriorly  in  a  thin  angle, 
like  a  keen  knife-cut.  Out  of  this  little  chink 
has  been  blown  the  rapturous  sylvan  fluting 
about  which  the  poets  have  raved  since  the 
days  of  Homer  and  Sappho. 

Just  in  front  of  the  glottidian  fissure  there 
is  a  valve-like  fold  of  mucous  membrane 
which,  when  the  tongue  is  raised,  is  drawn 
across  the  anterior  line  of  the  circular  part  of 
the  opening.  This  modified  upper  end  of  the 
trachea,  the  so-called  larynx,  is  connected 
with  the  tongue-bone  by  slender  muscles,  and 
the  lips  of  the  fissure  are  moved  by  nicely 
adjusted  intrinsic  muscles,  of  which  the  mock- 
ing-bird has  five  pairs.  The  contractor  mus- 
cles of  the  trachea  are  connected  with  the 
larynx,  and  when  they  are  drawn  taut  the 
glottis  is  depressed  between  the  horns  of  the 
hyoid  bone,  which  helps  to  form  a  resonant 
cavity  in  the  bird's  mouth,  and  at  the  same 
time  the  anterior  fold  of  mucous  membrane 
is  erected  as  a  sort  of  sounding-board  in  front 
of  the  orifice,  while  the  tongue  acts  as  a  re- 
flector or  vibrator,  as  the  need  may  be.  In 
the  mocking-bird  and,  indeed,  in  nearly  all 
the  true  song-birds  that  I  have  dissected,  the 
air  cells,  "  membranous  pneumatic  sacs,"  are 


120      THE  ANATOMY  OF  BIRD-SONG. 

largely  and  peculiarly  developed,  and  servo 
a  good  turn  in  the  matter  of  song-making, 
each  inflated  membrane,  especially  those  of 
the  anterior  part  of  the  thorax,  acting  as  a 
drum-head  or  sounding-board.  In  a  word, 
the  whole  bird  is  pneumatic,  and  often  in 
the  ecstasy  of  great  song-bursts,  it  vibrates 
throughout  from  tip  to  tip,  as  if  shaking  the 
sound  in  a  spray  of  melody  from  its  shining 
feathers.  The  peculiar  swaying  and  palpitat- 
ing motions  with  which  most  birds  accom- 
pany their  singing  are  attendant  upon  the 
respiratory  exertions  necessary  to  keep  the 
pneumatic  sacs  full  of  air.  Here  again  that 
semi-automatic  action,  peculiar  to  the  avian 
structure,  comes  into  play,  for  each  one 
of  these  respiratory  movements  affects  the 
trachea,  larynx,  and  glottis  by  muscular 
interference,  if  I  may  so  call  it.  That 
is,  muscles  called  into  action  for  one  pur- 
pose affect  other  muscles,  and  cause  them 
to  contract,  thus  bringing  about  an  in- 
voluntary double  movement.  Thus  when 
the  barn-yard  cock  stretches  his  neck  at  full 
length  to  crow,  the  movement  depresses  the 
glottis,  lifts  the  tongue,  and  forms  a  sound- 
chamber  in  the  posterior  mouth-cavity,  all 
at  once. 

The  lips  of  the  mocking-bird's  glottis  are 
extremely  elastic,  and  may  be  so  drawn  as 
to  give  any  shape  to  the  glottidian  fissure  that 
may  be  desired  in  forming^  note.  So  when 
the  tongue  is  drawn  back  with  the  barbs  or 
prongs  of  its  bony  tip  close  above  the  glottis, 
and  by  muscular  action  is  set  quivering,  the 
purest  flute  notes  are  disintegrated  and  sent 
forth  in  a  shower  of  sounds,  pleasing  or  harsh 
according  to  the  correlation  of  the  other  fac- 
tors of  modification. 

I  take  the  mocking-bird  (mimus  poly  glottis) 
as  the  highest  example,  in  my  discussion  of 


THE  ANATOMY  OF  BIRD-SONG.       121 

"song  anatomy,"  and  it  must  be  admitted 
that  it  is  the  highest  type  of  song-bird  from 
every  point  of  view,  though  its  syrinx  is  ab- 
solutely insignificant.  The  anatomy  of  its 
larynx  is,  on  the  other  hand,  quite  wonderful. 
For  several  reasons  I  have  chosen  to  make  a 
comparison  between  the  shrike  and  the 
mocking-bird,  mainly,  however,  on  account 
of  the  general  resemblance  borne  by  the  log- 
gerhead and  the  mocker  in  size  and  coloring, 
and  of  the  great  difference  in  their  voice 
powers. 

The  trachea  of  the  shrike  tapers  very  rap- 
idly from  glottis  to  syrinx,  while  that  of 
Mimus  is  nearly  uniform  from  just  in  front 
of  the  syrinx  to  where  it  suddenly  expands 
near  the  glottidean  fissure.  The  shrike  has 
but  three  pairs  of  intrinsic  laryngeal  mus 
cles,  the  lips  of  the  glottis  are  thick  and  clum- 
sy, as  compared  with  those  of  the  mocking- 
bird, and  the  fissure  is  larger  and  more  ob- 
tusely angular,  whilst  the  tongue  is  broader 
and  far  less  delicate  than  the  songster's. 

The  laryngeal  enlargement  of  the  mocking- 
bird's trachea  is  slightly  egg-shaped,  or  keg- 
shaped  ;  that  of  the  shrike  is  simply  a  con- 
tinuation of  the  tracheal  expansion  beginning 
at  the  syrinx.  The  shrike  has  a  well-devel- 
oped septum ;  indeed,  in  every  particular  its 
syrinx  is  far  superior  to  that  of  the  mocking- 
bird, and  the  contractor  muscles  of  its  trachea 
are  much  more  powerful.  Its  defect,  as  in 
the  case  of  the  crow,  the  cuckoo,  and  many 
other  birds,  lies  in  the  formation  of  the  glot- 
tis, the  mouth-cavity,  and  the  larynx,  the 
shape  of  the  tongue,  and  the  lack  of  a  suffi- 
cient number  of  intrinsic  laryngeal  muscles 
with  which  to  control  the  shape  and  action  of 
the  glottidean  fissure. 

Viewing  the  larynx  and  glottis  as  the 
mouth-piece  of  the  avian  song-organ  or  flute, 


122      THE  ANATOMY  OF  3IRD-80NQ. 

the  difference  between  this  mouth-piece  in 
true  singers  and  in  oscines  that  cannot  sing  is 
easy  to  distinguish.  The  shrike  tries  to  sing 
with  his  throat  wide  open — that  is,  he  tries  to 
whistle  without  "puckering"  his  lips!  The 
mocking-bird  knows  better. 

VII. 

In  summing  up  the  facts,  or  the  more  im- 
portant ones,  connected  with  the  ' '  anatomy 
of  bird-song,"  I  would  emphasize  the  fol- 
lowing : 

1.  The  syrinx  of  the  true  singing  birds  is 
invariably   smaller,  weaker,  arid    more    ob- 
scurely developed  than  that   of  the  songless 
oscines. 

2.  The  laryngeal  and  glottidean  membranes 
and  muscles  are  far  more  highly  developed 
and  specialized  in  the  true  singers  than  they 
are  in  the  oscines  that  cannot  sing. 

3.  The    so-called    "vocal    cords"    in    the 
syrinx  of  the  most  musical  birds  are  utterly 
devoid  of  the  structure  of  true  vocal  cords, 
and  serve  merely  as  valves  or  stops  at  the 
openings  of  the  bronchial  tubes. 

4.  The  intrinsic  muscles  of  the  syrinx  in 
true  singers  are  more  delicate,  more  numer- 
ous, and  more  specialized  than  those  of  the 
songless  oscines,  giving  greater  control  over 
the  management  of  the  breath  blown  from 
the  lungs  into  the  trachea. 

5.  The  form  of  the  trachea,  just  below  the 
glottis,  in  other  words,  the  form  of  the  larynx, 
in  all  the  accomplished  songsters  is  very  dif- 
ferent from  that  in  the  other  oscines,  being 
somewhat  like  the  "  egg-choke"  in  the  muz- 
zle of  the  shot-gun  barrel. 

6.  The  tongue  of  the  true  singer  is  slenderer 
and  thinner  than  that  of  the  whistler,  or  that 
of  any  other  songless  oscine. 

There  are  many  facts,  connected  with  the 
philosophy  of  the  vibration  of  air-columns, 


THE  ANATOM  Y  OF  BIRD-SONG.      123 

which  controvert  the  theory  of  syringeal 
song-generation.  This  theory  makes  the 
flute  upside  down,  and  gives  it  a  jarring 
tongue,  like  that  of  a  jew's-harp.  A  vibra- 
tory, sound-producing  membrane  in  the 
mocking-bird's  syrinx  would  destroy  utterly 
the  purity  of  its  rich  flute-notes,  just  as  a 
harp-tongue  in  a  flute  would  send  a  harsh  jar 
through  every  strain  blown  from  it.  Above 
all,  a  ' '  vocal  cord  "  less  than  the  twentieth  of 
an  inch  in  length,  and  but  little  more  than 
half  as  wide  as  it  is  long,  is  not  the  origin  of  the 
vigorous,  far-sent  whistling,  twittering,  and 
chirruping  that  we  hear  in  all  the  leafy  groves 
of  spring.  Syrinx  is  a  good  name,  suggestive 
of  the  avian  pipe,  but  it  should  be  given  to 
the  larynx,  of  which  the  glottis  is  the  mouth- 
piece, not  to  the  obscure  little  pump- valve 
box  at  the  hinder  end  of  the  trachea. 

If  I  have  succeeded  in  showing  that  the 
mocking-bird  is  a  flute-player,  instead  of  be- 
ing a  French-harp  blower,  I  shall  not  regret 
my  work.  Indeed,  I  do  not  regret  it  in  any 
event,  for  the  scattered  spaces  of  time  that  I 
have  filled  with  it  are  among  the  charming 
episodes  of  a  varied  out-door  experience, 
brimming  now  with  all  manner  of  melodious 
memories. 


SOME    HYOID    HINTS. 


ONE  of  the  unaccountable  prejudices  har- 
bored for  centuries  in  the  human  mind  is  that 
against  certain  harmless  reptiles,  birds,  and 
other  animals.  It  would  be  easy  to  fill  many 
pages  with  a  catalogue  of  the  victims  suffer- 
ing from  this  curious  obliquity  of  judgment 
on  the  part  of  intelligent  and  even  cultured 
people.  The  feeling  against  non-venomous 
reptiles  may  be  attributed,  with  some  stretch 
of  the  truth,  to  the  disgust  engendered  by 
ugliness ;  but  there  would  appear  to  be  no  intel- 
ligible foundation  whatever  for  the  prejudice 
against  certain  birds.  The  cat-bird,  for  in- 
stance, a  beautiful,  useful,  and  charmingly 
musical  little  creature,  naturally  inclined  to 
love  man  and  to  serve  him,  has  been  almost 
universally  despised  by  those  who  ought 
to  love  it  and  defend  it.  The  yellow-billed 
cuckoo  is  another  singularly  unfortunate  bird 
in  this  regard.  In  the  Southern  States  espe- 
cially it  is  the  subject  of  great  slander.  But 
there  is,  perhaps,  no  other  family  of  birds 
which,  in  America  at  least,  has  been  subjected 
to  such  unmitigated,  baseless  persecution  as 
that  to  which  the  family  of  woodpeckers  has 
submitted  within  the  present  century,  and 
falling,  too,  from  the  hands  of  the  most  en- 
lightened populace  on  the  globe.  So  deep- 
rooted  is  this  popular  prejudice  against  the 
woodpecker  that  one  may  be  sure  of  eliciting 
an  expression  of  surprise,  if  not  of  contempt, 
from  almost  any  audience,  by  remarking  upon 
the  beauty  of  any  species  of  the  bird.  Or- 
nithologists have  often  noted  this,  and  no 
part  of  the  prejudice  has  originated  with 
tl  10 in.  Indeed  no  bird  has  been  studied  more 


136  SOME  EYOID  HINTS. 

enthusiastically  or  praised  more  cordially  by 
intelligent  students  of  natural  history  than 
Picus  has  been,  unless  we  must  except  the 
kingfisher.  The  American  ornithologists,  es- 
pecially, have  been  generous  in  the  time  and 
labor  given  to  a  loving  study  of  the  life, 
habits,  and  specific  traits  of  our  many  and 
beautiful  woodpeckers.  If  Wilson's  and  Au- 
dubon's  noble  works  could  have  gone  early 
into  the  hands  of  the  people,  they  would  have 
been  of  incalculable  benefit  in  uprooting  and 
destroying  much  of  the  popular,  quasi-legen- 
dary prejudice  of  which  I  have  spoken,  but 
those  works  were  necessarily  expensive  and 
beyond  the  reach  of  all  but  the  rich  few.  It 
is  only  within  the  last  twenty  years  that  pop- 
ular science  has  been  serving  its  true  purpose 
by  taking  the  cheapest  and  farthest-reaching 
channels  of  self -distribution,  and  this  great 
factor  in  the  progress  of  common  intelligence 
and  universal  culture  has.  perhaps,  come  too 
late  to  do  its  whole  work.  Still  the  time  has 
arrived,  no  doubt,  when  one  may  put  into 
popular  form  even  a  study  of  woodpecker 
life,  and  be  sure  of  a  wide  and  sympathetic 
audience.  Possibly  a  mere  guarded  and  tech- 
nically severe  sketch  of  some  anatomical  and 
physiological  facts  of  woodpecker  biology 
would  hardly  be  so  secure  of  popular  atten- 
tion, and  yet  the  number  of  persons  who 
would  greedily  go  through  many  pages  of  the 
dryest  and  most  abstruse  phraseology  to  get 
one  grain  of  new  knowledge  in  any  field  of  sci- 
ence is  by  no  means  small.  In  fact,  the  strong- 
est trend  of  the  world's  forces  to-day  is  toward 
the  popularization  and  the  simplification  of 
scientific  methods  of  acquiring  knowledge  in 
every  field  of  inquiry.  It  is  this  trend  which 
is  fast  bringing  us  to  see  that  no  knowledge  (no 
matter  of  how  apparently  trivial  facts  in  na- 
ture) is  unprofitable  or  without  its  place  in  the 


SOME  HYOID  HINTS.  127 

great  chain  of  wisdom.  Art  is  not  the  whole  of 
life,  nor  is  material  progress  the  only  good. 
The  pleasure  of  knowledge,  never  embodied 
in  painting,  sculpture,  or  poem,  nor  applied 
to  any  economic  purpose,  is  of  itself  a  mighty 
factor  in  the  operations  of  human  life.  These 
may  be  trite  sentences,  but  I  fear  they  yet 
are  not  sufficiently  axiomatic  to  shield  me 
wholly  when  I  come  to  disclose  the  subject  of 
this  paper,  to  wit:  The  Tongue  of  a  Wood- 
pecker. If  I  should  say,  the  tongue  of  a  night- 
ingale, instead,  or  the  tongue  of  a  mocking- 
bird, or  even  the  tongue  of  a  blue-bird,  I 
might  hope  for  a  gracious  audience,  but  ths 
tongue  of  a  woodpecker  has  not  been  em- 
balmed in  melody  by  a  Shelley,  a  Keats,  a 
Tennyson,  or  a  Sappho,  nor  has  it  been  set  in 
romance  by  the  genius  of  all  ages,  nor  ever 
has  it  endeared  itself  to  the  popular  heart  by 
amorous  carols  in  all  the  orchards  and  groves 
of  the  land.  Still  I  might  make  bold  to  claim 
for  my  woodpecker's  tongue  some  pleasing 
notes  heard  in  the  wild  woods  when  the 
mornings  are  sweet  and  still. 

Buffon,  giving  rein  to  the  Latin  hobby  of 
romance,  described  the  woodpecker's  life  as 
one  of  singular  and  terrible  barrenness  and 
misery.  Indeed  if  Buffon,  viewed  in  the 
light  of  to-day,  may  be  called  an  ornitholo- 
gist, I  may  as  well  modify  what  I  said  a  while 
ago,  and  admit  that  one  great  bird-student  has 
slandered  my  subject  in  a  mild  way.  "Its 
movements  are  brusk,"  says  he,  "it  has  a 
restless  air,  harsh  traits  and  features,  a  sav- 
age and  wild  disposition,  fleeing  all  society, 
even  of  its  own  kind,  and  when  the  stress  of 
passion  forces  it  to  seek  a  mate,  it  is  without 
any  of  those  graces  with  which  the  feeling 
charges  the  movements  of  other  beings  who 
experience  it  with  a  tender  heart."  But  my 
observations,  extending  throughout  some 


128  SOME  HYOID  HINTS. 

years  and  over  a  wide  scope  of  country,  go 
directly  to  the  contrary.  There  are  no  hap- 
pier, brighter,  or  more  loving  birds  than  our 
woodpeckers.  True  they  are  noisy,  restless, 
bellicose,  and  self-assertive  to  a  degree,  but 
what  strong,  healthy,  wide-awake  bird  is  not  ? 
Even  Buffon,  in  giving  the  French  phonetic 
rendering  of  the  green  woodpecker's  voice, 
tio,  tio,  tio,  contradicts  himself,  for  that  note 
is  by  no  means  disagreeable  to  the  ear,  being 
very  like  the  quee-o,  quee-o,  quee-o  of  our 
golden- wing  and  our  red-head  (Melanerpes) . 
There  is  a  martial  fire  and  force  in  the  vigor- 
ous call  of  the  ivory-billed  woodpecker,  and  a 
rather  savage  strain  in  the  voice  of  the  log- 
cock,  but  both  these  great  birds  are  bright, 
happy,  companion-loving,  and  far  from  evil- 
disposed  in  any  way. 

All  the  smaller  woodpeckers  have  a  rather 
pleasing  cackle,  heard  mostly  in  the  spring, 
varying  from  gip,  gip,  gip,  through  several 
shades,  to  pip,  pip,  pip,  uttered  often  with 
ecstatic  rapidity.  Two  or  three  species,  nota- 
bly the  golden-wing  and  the  red-head,  repeat 
the  phrase,  pee-to,  pee-to,  as  they  climb  a  tree 
bole,  or  gallop  through  the  air.  Indeed  in  the 
West  and  South  a*  large  part  of  the  life  and 
cheer  of  the  woods,  fields,  and  orchards  is  due 
to  the  activity  and  loquacity  of  the  wood- 
peckers, whose  whisking  wings  and  gay  colors 
constantly  attract  attention. 

But  it  was  not  of  the  vocal  habit  of  the 
woodpecker's  tongue  that  I  set  myself  to 
write,  pleasing  as  the  task  might  be. 

If  you  will  cast  aside  all  prejudice,  and 
agree  to  forego  the  pleasure  of  putting  your 
tongue  in  your  cheek  and  twirling  your 
thumbs  in  derision  .of  my  subject,  I  will  pro- 


SOME  HTOID  HINTS.  129 

II. 

Any  ornithologist  will  tell  you  that  a  wood- 
pecker's tongue  is  the  most  peculiar  organ  he 
ever  examined,  strangely  complicated  in  its 
mechanism  and  singularly  striking  in  the 
variations  of  its  special  development  in  dif- 
ferent species,  and  that  no  organic  feature  of 
any  bird  has  been  more  minutely  studied  by 
comparative  anatomists.  From  Borelli  and 
Aldrovande  and  Mery  and  Olaiis  Jacobeus  on 
down  to  Owen,  Macgillivray  and  Parker,  there 
has  been  no  end  to  the  study  and  literature  of 
the  peculiarities  observable  in  the  hyoid  bone 
of  the  Picidee.  By  all  these  writers  the 
European  green  woodpecker  has  been  taken 
as  the  type,  unless  Parker's  use  of  Picus 
minor  in  his  general  anatomical  studies  may 
be  called  an  exception. 

The  anatomy  of  the  green  woodpecker,  so 
far  as  the  tongue  is  concerned,  is  almost  iden- 
tical with  that  of  our  American  red-head- 
ed woodpecker  (Melanerpes  erythrocephalus), 
saving  that  our  bird's  skull  has  no  decided 
groove  in  its  crown.  We  have  two  extremely 
specialized  genera,  Picus  and  Colaptes,  whose 
tongue  peculiarities  are  extreme.  These  may 
be  taken  as  types  for  the  purposes  of  this 
paper.  Those  who  are  not  ornithologists, 
however,  cannot  be  supposed  to  know  any- 
thing about  bird-anatomy,  therefore  it  will  be 
necessary  to  sketch  here  an  outline  of  the 
woodpecker's  lingual  peculiarities. 

The  tongue  proper  is  a  slender  flattish  shaft 
lying  between  the  mandibles,  and  flat  upon 
the  lower  one  when  not  in  use.  Thus  disposed, 
it  lacks  somewhat  of  reaching  to  the  end  of 
the  bill.  Its  fore-end  is  of  a  hard  horny  sub- 
stance, and  is  armed  with  barbs  not  unlike 
those  of  a  fish-hook.  Back  of  this  the  tongue- 
bone  (hyoid)  is  encased  in  a  sheath  of  muscu- 


130  SOME  HYOID  HINTS. 

lar,  membranous,  and  nervous  tissues,  and  it 
divides  into  two  horns,  which  passing  back- 
ward and  upward,  reach  forward  over  the  top 
of  the  skull,  and  down  to  the  base  of  the 
upper  mandible,  or  into  the  nostril,  or  curl 
under  the  right  eye  and  rest  almost,  or  quite, 
against  the  front  of  the  quadrate  bone.  In 
making  this  circuitous  passage  the  forks  of 
the  tongue-bone  go  on  either  side  of  the  neck 
and  come  together,  without  coalescing,  on  the 
back  of  the  skull,  whence  they  remain  touch- 
ing each  other  and  parallel,  to  the  end  of  their 
course. 

In  the  genus  Picus,  of  which  I  take  the 
hairy  woodpecker  as  the  typical  species,  the 
hyoid  cornua  (forks  of  the  tongue-bom 0  end 
their  peculiar  journey  below  and  rather  pos- 
terior to  the  bird's  right  eye. 

In  the  genus  Melanerpes,  of  which  our 
white-and-black  red-head  is  typical,  the  ter- 
minus is  on  the  central  front  of  the  skull,  just 
above  the  base  of  the  upper  mandible,  whilst 
the  genus  Colaptes,  to  which  our  flicker  be- 
longs, has  its  hyoid  cornua  prolonged  into 
its  nasal  cavity  by  way  of  a  nostril. 

In  each  case,  throughout  its  entire  course, 
this  peculiar  hyoidean  process  is  sheathed  in 
a  curiously-woven  wisp  of  muscles  and 
nerves,  which  is  modified  and  prolonged  be- 
yond the  bony  parts,  most  peculiarly  in  the 
instances  of  Picus  and  Colaptes. 

The  most  obvious  function  of  this  strangely 
specialized  hyoid  process  is  to  give  a  great 
thrust  to  the  tongue,  so  that  it  may  be  pro- 
jected far  beyond  the  end  of  the  bill.  The. 
longer  the  hyoid  cornua  the  farther  the  tongue 
can  be  thrust  out  of  the  mouth.  So  that  it 
has  been  taken  for  granted,  so  far  as  I  know, 
that  the  curling  of  the  cornua  over  the  skull 
between  the  skin  and  the  bone,  was  merely 
the  most  handy  and  economical  way  of  difr. 


SO  ME  HYOID  HINTS.  131 

posing  of  them,  in  order  to  get  the  best  re- 
sults from  them  in  controlling  the  tongue 
movements.  Does  it  not  appear  curious,  how- 
ever, when  one  comes  to  note  that  Colaptes 
has  its  tongue-bones  thrust  into  its  nostril, 
while  those  of  Picus  are  curled  around  under 
the  eye  to  near  the  ear  ? 

Although  I  had  previously  dissected  many 
woodpeckers,  and  had  studied  for  years  with 
care  their  tongue-anatomy,  it  was  not  until 
quite  recently  that  I  began  to  suspect  that 
another  function  than  that  of  projecting  the 
tongue  belonged  to  this  peculiar  specialization 
of  the  hyoidean  apparatus. 

During  an  out-door  meeting  of  the  Indiana 
Academy  of  Science,  I  went  into  a  dense  wood 
to  kill  a  wood-thrush  for  dissection.  While  I 
was  watching  for  my  bird  a  hairy  woodpecker 
came  and  lit  near  me  on  a  small  dead  branch 
of  a  beech  tree,  where  it  began  to  tap  the 
wood  with  its  bill,  meantime  slowly  hopping 
backwards  down  the  stem.  It  was  not  more 
than  eight  feet  from  me,  and  while  watching 
it  I  saw  that  it  would  strike  two  or  three 
smart  blows,  and  then  appear  to  be  listening, 
with  the  tip  of  its  bill  resting  against  the 
wood.  This  hearkening  attitude  was  never 
preserved  for  longer  than  the  merest  instant 
of  time,  but  its  purpose  could  not  be  misun- 
derstood. The  bird  was  listening  to  hear  any 
movements  made  by  worm  or  larvae  within 
the  branch.  The  bill-taps  were  meant  to 
startle  the  victims  and  to  make  them  move, 
so  that  they  could  be  heard.  I  became  inter- 
ested and  watched  closely  until  the  bird  suc- 
cessfully located  its  prey,  and  by  a  few  deft 
chisel-strokes  cut  in  and  took  it.  When  I  re- 
turned to  where  the  Academy  had  assembled, 
I  told  President  David  S.  Jordan,  the  well- 
known  ichthyologist,  that  I  believed  I  had 
;just  made  an  interesting  discovery,  and  sug- 


132  SOME  HYOID  HINT  is. 

gested  to  him  that  the  hyoid  cornua  might 
aid  Picus  in  hearing.  We  discussed  the  mat- 
ter for  a  moment,  and  the  subject  passed,  but 
it  came  again  and  again  to  my  mind,  till  at 
length  I  set  about  making  a  systematic  study 
of  it. 

In  the  case  of  the  hairy  woodpecker  the 
tongue  muscles  are  so  arranged  that  by  a  very 
simple  action  the  tongue  may  be  drawn  far 
back  into  the  mouth-cavity,  near  the  throat. 
This  is  true  in  a  greater  or  less  degree  of  all 
the  woodpeckers  having  the  specialized  hyoid- 
ean  process,  but  in  the  hairy  species  it  is  ex- 
tremely marked. 

The  true  woodpeckers,  from  the  great  ivory- 
bill  down  to  the  little  downy  species  (Pubes- 
cens),  have  poor  ears,  and  are  forced  to  de- 
pend upon  their  excellent  eyes  for  detecting 
the  approach  of  an  enemy,  hence  the  contin- 
ual motion  of  the  head,  which  has  given  color 
to  the  statements  of  Buffon.  The  log-cock, 
which  a  few  years  ago  was  one  of  the  com- 
monest birds  of  the  Western  "deadenings," 
makes  its  great  scarlet  head-tuft  fantastically 
conspicuous  by  tossing  it  this  way  and  that 
in  its  vigilant  watchfulness. 

Nearly  all  the  species  have  the  habit  of 
making  a  vibrating  noise  by  striking  an  elas- 
tic piece  of  wood  with  the  bill.  This  singular 
call  serves  the  woodpecker  in  the  place  of  a 
song.  To  his  heavy,  dull  ears  the  sound 
doubtless  is  very  pleasing.  To  understand 
this,  take  a  string  of  the  size  of  a  guitar 
string,  and  a  foot  long,  place  one  end  between 
your  teeth  and  the  other  between  the  thumb 
and  index  finger  of  the  left  hand,  draw  it  taut, 
and  strike  it  lightly  with  the  right  thumb. 
You  will  hear  a  sound  quite  inaudible  to  an- 
other person,  though  close  to  you.  This  aud- 
itory phenomenon  is  caused  by  the  vibrations 
of  the  string  being  imparted  to  the  lower  jaw- 


SOME  H70ID  HINTS.  133 

bone,  whose  articulations  are  close  to  the  ears, 
and  whose  muscular,  ligamentous,  and  ner- 
vous connections  with  the  ear-bones  are  very 
intimate. 

A  moment's  reflection  will  convince  anyone 
that  the  woodpecker's  brain  must  be  fortified 
against  the  effect  of  concussion,  for  if  any 
other  bird's  head  were  dashed  with  such  vio- 
lence against  hard  wood,  as  the  woodpecker's 
head  habitually  is,  death  would  quickly  re- 
sult. Indeed  no  person,  after  examination  of 
the  picidaean  habits,  can  doubt  that  the  wood- 
pecker is  hard  of  hearing.  Connect  with  this 
the  singular  fact  that  those  species  which  are 
forced  to  depend  upon  hearing  to  locate  their 
prey,  have  the  hy oid  cornua  reaching  to  the ' 
immediate  vicinity  of  the  ear,  whilst  the  spe- 
cies not  so  necessitated  show  a  modification 
of  those  bones,  and  we  have  a  curious  sugges- 
tion at  the  least. 

Upon  dissecting  a  hairy  woodpecker  we  dis- 
cover that  the  central  shaft  of  the  tongue-bone 
is  simpler  than  that  of  most  birds,  and  that  it 
forks  directly,  without  definite  articulations, 
thus  making  the  entire  hyoidean  apparatus  a 
continuous  and  singularly  elastic  bone,  pecul- 
iarly suited  to  conducting  vibrations  through- 
out its  length. 

Now  when  the  bird's  tongue  is  drawn  far 
back  in  the  mouth,  the  posterior  end  of  the 
hyoid  bones  is  thrust  against  a  cushion  of 
membrane,  muscle,  and  ligament  lying  imme- 
diately in  front  of  the  quadrate  bone,  which 
is  the  anterior  ear-wall,  and  if  at  the  same 
time  the  lower  mandible  is  let  fall  a  little,  so 
that  the  mouth  is  slightly  open,  the  posterior 
process  of  thejugal  bone,  called  the  quadrate 
jugal,  is  made  to  press  upon  the  lower  part 
of  the  quadrate  bone,  which,  being  slight  and 
having  air-chambers  around  it,  becomes  a  sort 


134  SOME  11YOID  HINTS. 

of  tympanum  for  conducting  vibrations  to  the 
auditory  nerves. 

The  upper  mandible  of  the  woodpecker  is 
longer  than  the  lower,  and  so  it  receives  the 
force  of  every  blow  made  in  pecking  hard 
wood.  But  this  mandible  is  not  movable. 

Now,  if  with  a  good  opera-glass  you  will 
carefully  watch  a  hairy  woodpecker  when  it 
is  trying  to  locate  a  wood-worm  in  a  dead 
limb,  you  will  soon  note  that  by  marvelous 
slight  he  first  strikes  the  hard  outer  crust  of 
the  wood  a  smart  blow  or  two,  making  a  dent 
therein.  Then  into  this  dent  he  thrusts  his 
upper  mandible,  and  allows  his  lower  one's 
point  to  rest  against  the  wood ;  at  the  same 
•time  his  tongue  is  drawn  in  to  the  utmost,  and 
the  whole  attitude  of  the  bird  is  a  listening 
one.  It  is  a  swift  movement,  and  will  not  be 
noticed  except  by  the  most  careful  observer.. 
Now  when  the  bird's  tongue  is  drawn  far  in, 
it  rests  between  the  prongs  of  the  lower  mnp- 
dible,  and,  pressing  upon  them,  forms  a  per- 
fect connection  for  receiving  the  vibrations 
imparted  thereto. 

I  was  at  first  of  the  opinion  that  in  the 
listening  attitude  Picus  thrust  his  tongue 
against  the  wood,  but  this  was  error,  as  I  soon 
discovered. 

III. 

Turning  from  the  true  woodpecker  to  the 
modified  species  Melanerpes  erythrocepJialus, 
we  find  some  curious  facts. 

The  hairy  woodpecker  (Picus  villosns)  is  a 
much  smaller  bird  than  the  red-headed  spe- 
cies (Melanerpes  erythrocephulus),  yet  the 
former  has  the  more  powerfully  fluted  bill 
and  a  brain  thrown  much  farther  back  in  its 
skull,  which  is  the  heavier.  The  upper  man- 
dible of  the  red-head  is  less  pronounced  in  its 
superiority  over  the  lower,  than  in  the  case 


SOME  1IYOID  HINTS.  135 

of  Pieus,  and  it  is  not  so  sharply  triangular 
as  that  of  the  genuine  woodpecker. 

In  all  of  its  habits  the  red-head  is  interme- 
diate between  Pic  us  and  Colaptes — that  is,  be- 
tween the  genuine  woodpecker  and  the 
flicker,  but,  curiously  enough,  Colaptes  has  the 
hyoid  cornua  produced  till  they  enter  the  nos- 
tril !  Why  is  this  ? 

The  red-head  is  an  expert  fly-catcher,  a 
great  fruit-eater,  and  much  given  to  picking 
insects  up  from  the  surface  of  the  ground, 
but  he  does  not  take  his  food,  as  a  rule,  by 
pecking  into  wood. 

Colaptes,  however,  although  he  does  not 
peck  much  in  wood,  pecks  holes  in  the  ground, 
and  takes  therefrom,  in  the  form  of  grubs, 
worms  and  larvae,  the  greater  part  of  his  food. 
In  this  his  habit  is  much  like  that  of  the 
woodcock  or  the  snipe.  His  bill,  however,  is 
not  soft,  flexible,  and  sensitive,  like  the 
snipe's,  though  it  is  decurved  and  very  little 
like  that  of  Picus. 

Now  it  is  well  known  that  the  olfactory 
powers  are  weak  in  most  birds,  and  they  are 
perhaps  weakest  in  the  woodpeckers.  It  is 
also  known  that  the  gustatory  powers  of  birds 
are  dull  and  weak.  Add  to  these  facts  that 
the  sense  of  smell  assists  that  of  taste,  and 
another  suggestion  arises.  Colaptes  may  have 
his  hyoid  cornua  and  their  attendant  wisp  of 
muscles  and  nerves  thrust  into  his  nostril  to 
aid  him  in  determining  Jby  taste  and  smell,  or 
by  a  modified  and  specialized  sense  of  touch, 
the  quality  of  the  food  found  in  the  ground  ! 

The  dissections  required  to  settle  such  a 
question  are  of  a  very  minute  and  difficult 
sort,  and  need  not  be  described. 

The  sap-sucker  (Sphyropicus)  is  not  by  habit 
an  insectivorous  bird ;  his  chief  food  is  the  sap 
and  viscous  matter  lying  between  the  bark 
and  the  wood  of  living  1  roes,  and  so  his  hyoid 


136  SOME  HYOID  HINTS. 

cornua  are  elongated  very  little,  if  any,  be- 
yond the  base  of  the  skull.  His  food  is 
selected  by  sight,  and  he  has  no  need  for  a 
specialized  hyoidean  apparatus.  Indeed  all 
of  the  species  of  woodpeckers  that  are  not  de- 
pendent upon  boring  into  wood  or  into  the 
ground,  and  that  therefore  do  not  have  to 
locate  their  food  or  test  its  quality  without 
seeing  it,  have  the  hyoid  bones  less  developed 
than  in  Picus. 

The  protrusion  of  the  tongue  is  the  more 
obvious  function  of  this  hyoidean  peculiarity, 
but  the  more  obscure  function  of  aid  to  the 
dull  senses  of  taste  and  hearing  is  not  there- 
fore less  important. 

It  would  not  be  of  particular  interest  in  this 
connection  to  go  into  the  minutiae  of  the  many 
slight  variations  of  the  tongue-peculiarity  ob- 
servable in  different  species.  I  have  given 
the  extremes,  the  mean  and,  in  the  instance 
of  Colaptes,  a  case  of  curious  intermedia  to 
specialization  (where  an  extreme  might  Lave 
been  expected  like  that  of  Spheropicus)  for 
meeting  the  exigency  of  a  singular  habit. 

It  is  impossible,  in  a  paper  addressed  to  the 
popular  understanding,  to  make  minute  com- 
parisons in  anatomy,  but  the  facts  upon  which 
I  insist  may  be  formulated  as  follows : 

1st.  The  picidaean  development  of  the  hyoid 
cornua  in  the  genus  Picus  has  for  its  second- 
ary function  a  mechanical  and  perhaps  sen- 
sory aid  to  hearing. 

2d.  Such  development  in  the  genus  Colaptes 
is  in  aid  of  the  sense  of  taste. 

So  minute  and  obscure  are  the  nerve  lines 
of  the  hyoid  sheath,  and  so  complicated  are 
the  wisps  of  motor  nerves  controlling  the 
tongue  of  the  woodpecker,  that  one  may  not 
speak  with  perfect  knowledge  as  to  where  mere 
motor  action  leaves  off,  and  the  telegraphy 
of  sense  begins,  but  it  appears  to  me  that  to 


SOME  HYOID  HINTS.  137 

the  ear  of  Picus  the  tongue  conveys  aid,  and 
from  the  olfactory  organ  of  Colaptes  the 
tongue  receives  aid — that  in  each  case  the 
hyoid  cornua  are  auxiliary  to  an  organ  other- 
wise powerless  to  perform  the  task  required 
of  it  by  a  narrow  and  exacting  habit  of  life. 
In  other  words,  if  Picus  could  have  heard  the 
worm  stir  in  the  wood,  we  should  not  have 
found  his  tongue-bones  seeking  his  ear,  and 
if  Colaptes  had  been  blessed  with  a  fine  sense 
of  taste,  his  nostrils  would  not  have  been  in- 
vaded by  his  hyoid  cornua  in  quest  of  aid. 

The  sheath  or  nerve-wisp  in  which  the 
tongue-bones  (hyoid  cornua)  of  Colaptes  are 
inclosed,  runs  to  near  the  anterior  extremity 
of  the  upper  mandible,  after  passing  into  the 
right  nostril.  Each  movement  of  the  bird's 
tongue  must  be  felt  in  its  nasal  cavity,  there- 
fore, and  to  what  extent  the  gustatory  sense 
may  thereby  be  aided  is  not  altogether  infer- 
ence. The  extremity  of  the  sheath  is  nerve- 
tissue  and  muscular  fiber,  and  is  obscurely 
connected  with  the  tissue  lining  the  nasal 
cavity,  and  this,  taken  along  with  the  facts 
already  given,  makes  it  clear  to  my  mind  that 
the  intrusion  of  the  tongue-bones  and  tongue- 
nerves  into  the  olfactory  space  is  not  acci- 
dental any  more  than  their  projection  around 
the  right  eye  to  the  ear  of  Picus  is  accidental. 

To  a  degree,  atrophy  and  hypertrophy  of 
the  limbs  and  organs  of  animals  are  the  out- 
come of  what  may  be  called  hereditary  desire 
arising  out  of  a  need,  negative  or  positive. 
A  negative  need  induces  atrophy,  as  where 
the  need  of  losing  a  useless  limb  slowly  with- 
ers it  by  non-use.  A  positive  need  induces 
hypertrophy,  as  where  the  over-development 
of  a  limb  is  caused  by  a  continuing  demand 
upon  its  strength  and  action. 

In  all  birds  the  motor  nerves  of  the  tongue 
pass  directly  to  the  brain,  and  in  the  wood- 


138  SOME  11YOID  HINTS. 

peckers  there  is  a  spray  of  fine  nerves  passing 
from  the  hyoid  sheath  all  along  its  course, 
and  disappearing  in  the  adjoining  tissues. 

A  minute  dissection  of  the  head  of  Pious 
villosus  shows  that  an  obscure  flat  band  of 
fibrous  tissue  passes  over  the  quad  rate  bone, 
from  the  end  of  the  hyoid  sheath,  but  not 
from  the  ends  of  the  cornua. 

Thus  it  will  be  seen  that  Nature  has  not 
stultified  herself  in  the  discrimination  between 
Picus  and  Colaptes,  in  the  matter  of  giving 
direction  to  the  posterior  wanderings  of  the 
tongue-attachments,  but  has  answered,  in  the 
only  safe  way,  the  insistent  demand  of  a 
great  need  in  each  case.  Picus  must  be  able 
to  hear  his  prey,  and  yet  if  his  ears  were 
sufficiently  sensitive,  of  themselves,  for  this 
purpose,  the  wood-pounding  the  bird  has  to 
do  would  kill  him.  So  Colaptes  must  take 
his  food  from  the  ground ;  but  his  bill  is  not 
soft  and  filled  with  nerves,  like  the  snipe's, 
therefore  he  must  depend  upon  his  tongue, 
which  in  turn  is,  alas  !  a  woodpecker's  tongue, 
and  cannot  be  trusted  until  it  has  formed  a 
connection  with  the  olfactory  cavity  ! 

The  woodpecker's  eyes  are  immense,  in  com- 
parison with  the  size  of  the  skull,  and  have  a 
power  of  vision  not  surpassed  by  that  of  the 
hawk's  or  the  kingfisher's.  Whenever  his 
chosen  food  can  be  selected  by  his  eyes,  he  has 
no  need  for  any  extraordinary  disposition  of 
the  tongue-bones. 

In  treating  the  case  of  Colaptes,  I  have  used 
the  idea  of  gustatory  aid  derived  from  the  nos- 
tril, but  I  doubt  if  the  actual  sense  of  taste 
is  really  aided  directly,  though  this  is  far  from 
impossible.  The  chief  effect  of  the  nostril  and 
tongue  connection  may  be  the  registration  (by 
vibration)  of  the  movements  of  prey  when 
caught.  Thus  when  the  bird,  with  its  beak 
deep  in  the  ground,  draws  a  worm  up  into  its 


SOME  HYOID  HINTS.  IW 

mouth  with  its  tongue,  the  worm's  slightest 
movement  is  telegraphed  through  the  tongue 
to  the  sensitive  membrane  of  the  nasal  cavity, 
and  so  to  the  brain. 

In  this  connection  it  may  be  interesting  to 
note  that  Colaptes,  in  taking  food  by  pecking 
in  the  ground,  rarely  needs  to  thrust  its 
tongue  out  very  far,  as  from  the  nature  of  the 
case  the  prey  must  be  reached  by  the  bill  be- 
fore it  is  captured.  Indeed  careful  observa- 
tion has  led  me  to  feel  quite  sure  that  it  is 
by  the  touch  of  the  tongue,  and  the  conse- 
quent impression  conveyed  to  the  brain 
through  the  hyoid  apparatus,  that  Colaptes 
distinguishes  a  grub  from  a  plant-bulb,  or  a 
worm  from  a  soft  root,  as  he  delves  in  the  soil 
for  his  daily  food.  By  an  almost  precisely 
similar,  though  less  roundabout  way,  the 
woodcock  and  the  snipe,  the  duck  and  the 
goose,  distinguish  edible  from  inedible  sub- 
stances buried  under  mud  and  water,  where 
neither  sight  nor  the  sense  of  smell,  as  com- 
monly defined,  can  be  trusted. 

The  hyoid  cornua  of  the  humming-bird  curls 
up  over  the  back  of  the  skull,  but  the  tongue 
is  hollow  and  sensitive,  so  that  the  gustatory 
power  is  probably  fairly  well  developed,  and 
there  is  no  need  of  any  secondary  connection 
of  the  organ  with  the  brain ;  besides,  the  hum- 
ming-bird doubtless  uses  its  eyes  in  selecting 
its  food. 


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